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The heat in their voices escalated. So did the volume.
She inhaled, trying to summon some control. They needed to talk about this, and if she was being fair, he had every right to be confused and worried. But not this second. “This woman keeps showing up. She turned up at the school, watching me. Should I have let her go without insisting she tell me why?”
“Maybe... could she just have a kid at Nathan’s school?”
“She was at Josh’s office building.” That information only made him tense up again, so Elisa put her hands on his forearms. “Listen to me.”
“Go ahead.”
He was trying even though he wanted to lecture and raise his voice and insist on having the conversation he wantedto have. They’d been married long enough for her to see the signs. She could also see him fighting those impulses.
She squeezed his arms, needing to feel him there and sturdy and with her. “I didn’t know if she was following me or you. If she had something to do with...”
“What?”
“You.”
He stared at her. She could see the second he got her reference.
“Did you think I was having an affair?” He sounded stunned at the idea.
The rush of relief she felt when she heard the distaste in his voice left her a little embarrassed. She rubbed her thumb over the skin peeking out from his rolled-up shirtsleeve. Anything to soothe him. “I thought it was possible.”
“It’s not,” he blurted out. “I am not cheating. You’re scaring the shit out of me, but I’m not going anywhere. I need you to understand that. I love you, and I am right here.”
“I know.” She rested her head against his chest for a second. Soaked in that feeling of comfort because she knew she was going to need it after she dropped the rest of what she’d found out. “She was dating Josh.”
He tensed and held her away from him. “What?”
She couldn’t back down. “The redhead.”
“When?”
“At the same time as Abby. Maybe Rachel, too. There was definite overlap.” How much wasn’t completely clear because the timelines were a bit fuzzy in Rachel’s mind.
Harris shook his head as if she’d confused him. “I don’t understand.”
She boiled it down to the simplest point. “Your brother has a serious problem with women.”
Dead and alive.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Josh walked into the house a second later. “Hello.”
“I need to start bolting the doors from the inside,” Elisa whispered. But she meant it.
Josh kissed her on the cheek and handed Harris a bottle of wine. “What’s going on? Did I come too early?”
“I didn’t know you were coming at all.” She’d been thinking tonight called for pizza. A break from cooking and cleaning up, but now that wasn’t going to happen. She got to end her shitty day by pretending not to be annoyed.
Josh frowned at her. “We talked about this today.”
“Dinner?” She didn’t remember and wasn’t convinced the conversation actually happened. Josh seemed to be engaging in some sort of gaslighting campaign. Give her keys to a storage unit... and then make sure it was empty. Send an ex, possibly current, secret girlfriend to follow her and poke around in her life.
“You don’t remember?” Josh asked.
Her defenses immediately rose. She didn’t because it never happened.
