He gives my hand a final squeeze and says good-bye.

“Take care, Daniel,” I say, and then I head home, confident that all is right in the world.

Chris is standing in the kitchen when I get home. “Hey,” he says. “You’re back. I never did ask you where you were going.”

“I went to visit Daniel at the rehab center.”

Chris stands very still, his face expressionless.

“I don’t know if you can understand this, but I needed to know that he was okay. To let him know that I was concerned, that I’d been thinking about him. I won’t be going back, but I needed the closure.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Yes,” I say, holding back the tears. “He’s going to be just fine.”

Chris doesn’t smile, but he nods. “I’m glad to hear it.”

I walk over to him and bury my face in his shirt. He puts his arms around me, squeezes me tight, and kisses my cheek.

“Thank you,” I say.

 • • •

 • • •

 • • •

Something wakes me up in the middle of the night. I open my eyes and listen, but my senses register nothing but darkness and the absolute stillness of the room. I’ll always love this time of night, before dawn crests on the horizon and brings light and a new day.

Chris sleeps beside me, one arm thrown over my waist, breathing softly. The weight of his arm anchors me to the bed, to him, to this life.

I roll from my back onto my side, toward him, this man that I could not leave. He murmurs in his sleep as I bury my face in his neck, pressing the length of my body against him, the smell of his skin as familiar and comforting as anything I’ve ever known.

I do think we have the capacity to love more than one person at a time, and that the love we feel for someone can be displaced, transferred, shifted. Even shared with another. But not lost. At least not forever.

The kisses I flutter along Chris’s jaw rouse him from sleep, slowly, but I know the exact moment he awakens fully because he tangles his fingers in my hair and pulls me closer, lips pressing firmly onto mine, the desire rolling off him in waves.

Maybe love is like a pendulum. It swings back and forth, slowly, steadily, and sometimes you don’t know where it will come to rest.

We made it through the first real test of our marriage, of our life together. Neither of us came out of it unscathed. Neither of us will ever forget what happened.

But both of us can forgive.

acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to thank my husband, David, and my children, Matthew and Lauren: You’ve waited patiently while I spent hour upon hour in my writing chair, with fictional people. To be clear, these people will never mean more to me than the three of you.

To my US editor, Jill Schwartzman: Thank you for your excellent guidance and your friendship. Thank you also for reading about me in Variety and taking the ball and running with it. I truly believe that all things happen for a reason. To Brian Tart, Ben Sevier, Christine Ball, Carrie Swetonic, Phil Budnick, Stephanie Hitchcock, Erica Ferguson, and the rest of the team at Penguin: Thank you for being just as excited as Jill and for making me feel so welcome.

To my UK editor, Sam Humphreys: Thank you for your wonderful insights and your unwavering support.

To Jane Dystel, Miriam Goderich, and Lauren Abramo: I couldn’t ask for better literary representation. Thank you for all that you’ve done for me.

To Amanda Walker and Elizabeth Keenan: Thank you for being the most awesome publicists an author could ever hope for.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the people who so graciously gave me their time in the name of research. Officer Jeff Casey of the Urbandale, Iowa, police department shared his knowledge of all things police-related, and never once complained about my barrage of text messages when I thought of “just one more thing.”

To Tracie Banister and Kristy Slining: Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your personal anecdotes about type 1 diabetes. I so appreciate your willingness to share your stories with me.

To Julie Gieseman: Thank you for demonstrating the intricacies of an insulin pump.

To Elisa Abner-Taschwer: Thank you for your cheerleading and for being all-around amazing.

To Colleen Hoover: Thank you for reading the early draft of Covet and for giving me that great idea when I ran the alternate ending by you. Beta feedback is truly a magical thing.

To my copyeditor, Mikayla Butchart: Thank you for your extraordinary attention to detail. Because of you, I will spell the word barbecue correctly from now on.

And last, but certainly not least, thank you to the readers who have made all of this possible.