I’ve been married to Miles Grant for three years, and we’ve always treated each other with polite respect.

Everyone says I have a good husband. I used to think so too.

Until the day I saw him with his arm around another woman, walking into the obstetrics and gynecology department.

Between their easy laughter, I heard her call him something intimate—“the baby’s father.”

…

Kira Vance had broken her leg and was lying in a hospital bed, loudly demanding my cooking.

For the sake of our ten years of friendship, I used my lunch break to drive over and bring her food.

I’ve never had a good sense of direction, so I wandered around the hospital with the insulated bag in hand and still couldn’t find the room number Kira had given me.

But I did find someone I never expected to see.

My husband, Miles.

I hadn’t even had the chance to call out to him and ask what he was doing there when a playful, girlish voice sounded:

“Miles.”

My footsteps halted.

A woman in a loose white dress jogged toward him, her skirt swaying around her legs.

“Slow down. What if you hurt the baby?” Miles’s words sounded like a mild complaint, but his tone was indulgent and gentle.

Only then did I notice he was holding a few sheets of paper in his hand.

Baby?

What baby?

Even though the truth was practically slapping me in the face, I still clung to a shred of hope.

Maybe… maybe he was just accompanying a pregnant colleague for a checkup.

He’s always been the helpful type, someone who’ll lend a hand to anyone who needs it.

With that thought, my chest eased just a little.

But the woman’s next sentence dropped me straight into an ice-cold abyss.

She slipped her arm through his and said sweetly, “Got it, baby’s daddy. All you ever worry about is the little one in my belly, you don’t care about me at all.”

Miles naturally freed one arm to pull her closer. “You’re talking nonsense. You’re the one I worry about most.”

The two of them walked off together, laughing and chatting, heading toward the direction clearly marked Obstetrics.

They looked every bit like a pair of newlyweds glued to each other, sickeningly sweet.

Too bad the groom was my husband of three years.

My hands trembling, I took out my phone and dialed Miles.

After only two rings, a cold robotic female voice cut in, “The number you have dialed is currently on another call…”

“I’m in a meeting. We’ll talk later.”

A message popped up from Miles on Facebook.

My grip on the phone tightened instinctively. A chill spread across my face before I even realized I’d gone pale.

When I finally pulled myself together, I let a nurse lead me, half in a daze, to Kira’s room.

At the door, I wiped my face with my hands before pushing it open.

She was in the bed farthest inside. As soon as she saw me, she waved big and broad, her usual unrestrained self. “Over here! What took you so long?”

I set the food down by her bed and forced a smile. “You know me. I can get lost in a damn hallway.”

Kira was truly starving. She pulled the lunch box out of the insulated bag and started shoveling food into her mouth, speaking around the bites, “Your cooking is so good. God, I’m so jealous of Miles—he gets to eat this every day.”

At the mention of “Miles,” a fresh stab of pain lanced through my chest.

When I didn’t respond, she looked up at me in confusion. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been totally out of it since just now.”

I opened my mouth, but before I could get a word out, tears started falling on their own.

My fucking leaky-eyes condition.

Kira panicked instantly.

She fumbled for a couple of napkins, using one to wipe her own mouth and shoving the other into my hand for my tears.

“What the hell happened?”

I finally spilled everything I’d just seen.

“No way.” Kira stared at me in disbelief. She hesitated, then said, “Are you sure you didn’t…missee it?”

You couldn’t really blame her. In front of everyone, Miles had always been the picture of the gentle, considerate, perfect husband.

No one would ever think to put the word “cheating” next to his name.

I wished I had seen it wrong.

But I’d known him for ten years. I knew his build, his voice, every detail of him. There was no way I’d mistaken him for someone else.

Kira went quiet for a while.

“Do you know who that woman is?” she asked.

I shook my head.

It was ironic. Because I trusted him, I’d never interfered in Miles’s social life.

“I think the first thing you need to figure out is who she is,” Kira said. “You can try to think if there’s any name he’s mentioned a lot that you’ve never actually met.”

She lifted her wrist to check the time. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work soon? If you’re really not feeling okay, why don’t you take the afternoon off?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got an important meeting this afternoon. I can’t get away.”

But it turned out that when something’s gnawing at you, it’s impossible to focus on work.

After the meeting ended, the junior staffer sitting beside me gave my sleeve a gentle tug. “Dana, if you’re really not feeling well, you should go home and rest.”

I gave her an embarrassed smile and thanked her for the concern.

Back in the office, I dropped into my chair and rubbed at my temples, my head throbbing.

People say if you’re unlucky in love, you’ll be lucky at work. But with this bright green hat of mine shoved on my head, my mood was a mess, and it was absolutely screwing with my job.

Kira’s words came back to me, and I started mentally combing through the names of women Miles had mentioned but I’d never met.

No matter how I thought about it, it always came back to a few of his colleagues.

But I knew a bit about their situations. They were all married, and most of them were older than us.

And knowing Miles, he would never go for a woman older than himself.

My thoughts were a jumble, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with an answer.

Apparently, though, big data could hear my thoughts.

TikTok pushed me a video from “Someone You May Know.”

The caption read: My hubby came with me for another prenatal checkup~ Checkup done, now time to shop and eat OVO.

Compelled by some dark impulse, I started flipping through the photos.

When I got to the last one, my finger froze.

I stared at their joined hands in the picture.

On the man’s wrist was a watch—identical to the anniversary gift I’d given Miles.

More importantly, in the web of his thumb was a small, diamond-shaped birthmark.

My instincts and the evidence both told me that the woman in the video was the same one I’d seen today in the white dress.

I tapped into her profile. She was clearly a girl who loved looking pretty; her page was full of selfies.

The face in the photos gradually overlapped with the woman I’d seen at the hospital at noon.

It really was her.

I opened a few comment sections, hoping to catch some sort of clue there.

But maybe he’d been careful. Miles had never once commented on any of her videos.

There was just one comment that mentioned her name.

Piper.

It sounded so damn familiar.

I racked my brain for a long time before finally placing it.

Piper Tate—an intern Miles had mentored for a while.

But whenever he mentioned her, his expression was always full of helplessness.

He’d said the company had hired a batch of interns through campus recruitment, and somehow he’d been randomly assigned a little apprentice.

He’d said that girl was unbelievably dumb, that he had to explain one simple thing to her for ages before she got it.

He’d said she was even from a top university, but her mind just wasn’t quick at all.

I always comforted him, telling him every newcomer had to go through a learning curve like that, and it was normal to learn slowly.

He’d just shake his head and sigh that whoever ended up being her mentor was really fucking unlucky.

…

He’d seemed genuinely exasperated with this girl.

Under those circumstances, would they really end up together?

I found it unbelievable.

But thinking about it more carefully, it was true he hadn’t mentioned her name in a long time.

That’s why I hadn’t thought of her at first.

When I got off work that evening, Miles was already home.

A delicious fragrance drifted out from the living room. At the same time, he came out of the kitchen grinning, wearing heat-resistant gloves and holding a clay pot.

“You’re back? Go wash your hands and get ready to eat.”

I glanced at the table. It was covered with all my favorite dishes.

And in the pot was braised chicken.

I’d casually mentioned a couple of days ago that I was craving it, so he’d made it for me.

He always seemed to tuck everything I said away in his heart.

I couldn’t imagine someone like that betraying me.

And yet he had.

I’d seen it with my own eyes.

“Dana?” Seeing me just stand there, he called my name again, puzzled.

Miles took off his apron, slipped an arm around my waist, and guided me to the chair. “Rough day at work? Are you exhausted?”

I sat down stiffly, watching him as he went back into the kitchen, scooped the rice, and came out with bowls and chopsticks.

“Come on, try my cooking. See if it’s still as good as before.”

He smiled at me, the sharpness of his features softening as his brows relaxed.

“That apprentice of yours, Piper… is she still working under you? I haven’t heard you mention her in a long time.”

At my question, Miles’s brows tightened almost imperceptibly, but his expression stayed composed. “Of course she’s still in our department, but she’s not an intern anymore.”

“I remember you used to say she was stupid, always screwing up her work. Someone like that still got a full-time offer?”

“Our standards for hiring full-time aren’t that strict. Besides, she’s got an amazing mentor like me, doesn’t she?”

“So if you add it up, you’ve been mentoring her for almost a year now, right?”

“More or less. Why?”

I nodded. “Do you remember how long we’ve been together?”

“Dating for five years, married for three…” His face turned a little stiff. “Why are you asking all these weird questions? What happened?”

I looked straight at him. Even now, he was still pretending he didn’t know a damn thing.

“You’re asking me what happened?” I let out a cold laugh, but my tears fell anyway, like a string snapping. “Our eight years together still can’t compare to the one year you’ve spent with someone else.”

Miles’s face changed in an instant.