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Suddenly answering my husband’s phone call feels far more intimate than marrying him did, which is ridiculous.

My pulse is doing something embarrassing. My palms are damp. I wipe one on my jeans and leave a faint smear of butter behind.

“Are you going to answer that?” Dottie asks.

“I was thinking about it.”

“You’ve got five seconds.”

“Right.”

I swipe.

“Hello?”

There’s a beat of silence.

I hear him breathe. Behind him, faint and far away, a car horn and the hum of a city that isn’t this one.

Then a deep male voice says, “What did he say?”

Oh my.

His profile should have included audio, because I was not prepared for the gravel and the deep timbre of his voice and what it does to my skin. It slides down the back of my neck like warm water. Goosebumps rise along my arms, and I’m suddenly, deeply grateful he can’t see me.

I clear my throat.

“Hello to you too, husband.”

Another pause.

And then I swear I hear something in his voice. Almost a laugh.

Rusty. Like a door that hasn’t been opened in a while.

“Hello, Noelle.”

No one has said my name like that in a long time. Like it’s something he’s turning over to look at.

I smile.

“He said you say shit.”

Across the counter, Shiloh dissolves into giggles, sliding halfway off the stool, and Dottie has to grab the back of his pajama shirt to keep him from hitting the floor.

And standing there in a stranger’s kitchen, phone pressed to my ear, I realize I’m laughing too.

chapter

four

Maverick

My wife has been in my house for eight days, and there are things stuck to my refrigerator. I know this because Dottie sends me photographic evidence.

The text comes in at 9:14 a.m. while I’m in the back of a car crawling up Michigan Avenue, the windows streaked with sleet, the driver muttering at a delivery truck double-parked outside a Walgreens.

Dottie: Look what Shiloh made at school.