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At some point, she fell asleep. I took my spot back in the chair and just watched her for a while, wondering what she was going to do now.

I used to think soft women like her wanted anchors. Someone to cling to.

But in a few hours, I had her figured out.

The cooking. The homemaking. Wanting babies.

Zane didn’t want an anchor.

She wanted to be one.

She wanted to hold someone down.

To be the reason they came home.

To take care of someone the way no one had ever taken care of her.

She wanted to be needed.

Wanted her softness to matter.

Her warmth to mean something.

She wanted to love someone the way she wasn’t being loved.

And it pissed me off to know a woman like her was trying to prove she was enough for someone who never deserved her. Shaking my head, I leaned back in my chair, closing my eyes.

When I woke up, the sun was fully up, streaming through the windows. She was still asleep, her hair a mess, her face peaceful.

For a moment, I imagined what it might be like if this were our life.

We were just two people who’d found each other in the wreckage of our failed marriages. What if I leaned into that? What if I gave her the baby she wanted, let her build the family she’d been begging for?

I could see her in my kitchen, barefoot, humming off-key. I could see her arms being the ones I collapsed into when the world got too heavy.

I could see it.

But could I get her to see it?

I stood quietly, careful not to wake her, and headed to the kitchen to make coffee, thinking about stealing another man’s wife—

But was it really stealing when Mark opened the door and left it unlocked while he was fucking my wife on my living room floor?

Chapter 6- Zane

I woke to the shriek of the fire alarm. My heart kicked up before my eyes were even fully open.

For a split second, I thought I was home. That I’d fallen asleep with something in the oven again.

I sat up. My stomach rolled. My head spun.

I groaned. Blinking, I looked around.

I’m not home.

Suddenly, where I was and why all rushed back to me.

Janet. Mark.