Lena’s throat closed. She’d bought him that watch last week. For their anniversary. The receipt was still in her purse.
Same stainless steel.
No. Mark doesn’t wear a watch.
Lena sat up in bed, the cold sheet beside her a dead weight. Mark’s side. Empty. Again. The digital clock on the nightstand bled red numbers: 3:17 AM. Through the thin apartment walls, she heard the muffled thud of the building’s stairwell door. Footsteps. Too light for Mark’s heavy tread. ntr nightmare
He held up the phone. The photo was timestamped. Date, time, GPS coordinates. All wrong. All damning. And in the image, a man’s arm draped over her shoulder. She couldn’t see his face. Just a watch on his wrist—a stainless steel diver, same as Mark’s. Lena’s throat closed
And in the dream she was still having—the one she hadn’t woken from at all—a phone buzzed on the nightstand. Not Mark’s. Hers. A text from an unknown number. No words. Just a photo. The receipt was still in her purse