Chapter 2

Adrian said that if I was determined to suspect him, he might as well give me something real to suspect. Then perhaps I would finally stop making a problem out of everything.

After that, he brought Sienna even closer.

The more upset I became, the more openly he favored her.

He seated her beside him in the trustees’ section at hockey games, wrapped his scarf around her neck in front of half the campus, and once dropped to one knee at a student council fundraiser to tie her shoelace.

Whenever I confronted him, he stopped speaking to me for days. Whenever I apologized, he invited our mutual friends over and let them take turns telling me I was too jealous and needed to grow up.

Eventually, I began to question myself.

Maybe I really was too sensitive. Maybe I simply wasn’t mature enough to accept that men and women could be close friends. Maybe if I stopped reacting, Adrian would become the boy who used to wait outside my evening classes in the snow.

Then, on the third day of our latest fight, I became so sick from an inner-ear infection that I couldn’t sit up without the room spinning.

Adrian saw me gripping the edge of the bed to keep from falling.

He left a box of meclizine on the nightstand, packed his weekend bag, and went to pick up Sienna for Beach House Week on Cape Cod.

He had already promised to take her, he said. He wasn’t going to cancel an entire trip over one of my “emotional little health scares.”

When the door closed behind him, my last bit of hope disappeared.

Five years together was enough.

It was time to end this farce.

By the time I finished tagging the test logs, I was the only person left in the engineering building.

I opened Kingsley’s social feed and found several new posts from Sienna.

The trustees’ club on the Charles River glittered behind her. Candles burned across the table, and Adrian was cutting the steak on her plate while she smiled at the camera.

Her caption read:

[Apparently, steak tastes better when the student council president cuts it for you.]

The comments quickly filled with teasing.

[You two are ridiculously sweet.]

[When are we getting a wedding invitation?]

[Our student council president and his campus sweetheart.]

Adrian replied with three dots.

Sienna added a playful winking emoji.

Just like every other time, neither of them corrected anyone.

In the past, I would have called Adrian immediately. He would have accused me of embarrassing him over a few harmless comments and told me that my jealousy had once again ruined everyone’s evening.

This time, I felt nothing.

I uploaded the completed data to the team cloud and sent him a message.

[The test logs are finished.]

Then I replaced Drone Three’s propellers, cleaned the demonstration area, and returned to our off-campus townhouse.

I had barely stepped inside when a video call from Adrian’s account appeared on my tablet.

When I answered, Sienna’s face filled the screen.

“Claire, thank you so much for organizing the data for me,” she said sweetly. “I’ll buy you dinner sometime.”

Before I could respond, Adrian’s voice came from beside her.

“What are you thanking her for? She’s still part of the project. It’s her job.”

Sienna turned toward him with a playful frown.

“Adrian, Claire is your girlfriend. You could speak to her a little more gently.”

They sounded so comfortable together that anyone listening would have assumed Sienna was his girlfriend, not me.

I let out a quiet laugh.

Adrian rarely allowed his phone out of his sight. Once, I had picked it up only to check the time, and he accused me of invading his privacy.

Now he had handed it to Sienna without a second thought and let her call me from his account.

That alone made it clear which of us he considered close and which of us he did not.

Strangely, I was completely calm.

Something that once would have felt like the end of the world now seemed almost insignificant.

After chatting with Sienna for another minute, Adrian finally seemed to remember I was still on the call.

“I’ll be home later,” he said impatiently. “Don’t wait up. Get some sleep.”

Then he ended the call.

When Adrian said “later,” he usually meant two or three in the morning.

In the past, I would have left the living room light on and waited for him, growing more anxious with every passing hour.

Tonight, I turned off the lights and went straight to the study.

On the desk, one line glowed on my digital calendar.

[Three days remaining.]