Page 1 of In Love with My Secret Husband

Chapter One

THE BATHROOM MIRRORwas bare.

Troy stood in front of it the way he stood in front of it every morning. Hands on the counter, jaw tight, the overhead light catching the scar above his left eyebrow where a puck had split the skin in the 2019 playoffs.

The mirror was large and expensive and completely empty. No gold star stickers in the corners. No tiny adhesive residue where they used to be.

She had scraped every one of them off, but he hadn't noticed they were missing. Not when the first one disappeared. Not when half of them were gone. He only noticed now, a full week after his wife had sat across from him at dinner and said, quietly, that she needed to talk.

He hadn't even looked up from his phone.Sure. Next week.

That was what he always said when Laina needed something that required him to stop and be present.Next week. After the season. When things slow down.Except things had finally slowed down. He had retired six months ago. Twelve seasons, a championship, three MVP awards, and he had walked away from all of it because he thought it was time. Time to be the husband he had never been. Time to make things right.

Instead, everything had gone wrong. And meanwhile his wife had been peeling gold stars off his mirror one by one while he brushed his teeth beside her and didn't notice.

Next week was today. And the mirror was bare.

He brushed his teeth. Rinsed. Dressed. Went downstairs.

And stopped.

Laina was in his kitchen.

She was wearing his old practice jersey, the Waymakers one with the torn hem that she'd stolen out of his closet so many years ago he'd stopped looking for it.

Her hair was up in the knot she slept in, the one that listed to the left and shed bobby pins like a tree shedding leaves.

She was holding a mug he had never seen before, something white with red letters. Her thermos, the one that saidMrs. Bon the bottom, the one she had used every single morning of their marriage, was washed and put away in the cabinet.

The cabinet was still open. This was another thing about their marriage that had never changed. Laina always forgot to close cabinets, and unfortunately, it was one of the few things he had been able to do for her as a husband.

A man who had one of the most successful hockey careers in history, and with more money than he would ever be able to spend in several lifetimes...

And that was one of his crowning achievements as a husband.

Closing cabinets behind his wife.

Something on the counter caught his eye, and his jaw clenched. Divorce papers. Next to her staff badge.

In the corner of his eye, he caught Laina jerking, her back turning ramrod straight. It was a familiar posture. Something he had noticed over the years she would do when she was terrified. When she was about to check the online results of an exam. When she was about to read something she wasn’t sure would be good or bad.

And now...

His soon-to-be ex-wife could only be scared of one thing.

And that was him.

The knowledge had his chest tightening as he finally turned to look at her.

Her chin was up and her shoulders were back and her hands were wrapped around the mug so tightly her knuckles had gone white. She looked like a woman who had practiced this in the bathroom mirror for a very long time.

He watched Laina square her shoulders. And then she started...babbling. Not talking. But babbling. Because his wife was now afraid of him.

"I rented an apartment. It's near campus. Two bedrooms. And the lease is month-to-month so it's flexible."

She stopped. Her throat worked. Her body shaking in ways that one could and couldn’t see. And the only reason he knew this was because he knew her.

He knew that the babbling was armor, rehearsed and polished, all the facts in a row, square footage and deposits and lease terms delivered in the same bright, rapid voice she used atparent-teacher conferences when she was explaining to a father twice her size that his child had bitten another student.