But under his sleeve, something cold pressed against her skin. She pulled back the fabric. A stainless steel diver’s watch. Same as the dream. Same as the man whose face she never saw.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but the dream’s projector kept rolling. Now she was in the living room. Mark stood by the window, his back to her, phone in hand. The glow lit his face in sickly blue. He was scrolling through photos. Photos she recognized. Her own phone’s gallery, but the shots were wrong. Angles she never took. Her laughing at a bar she’d never been to. Her hand resting on a knee that wasn’t Mark’s. Her lips parted in the passenger seat of a car she didn’t own.
He held up the phone. The photo was timestamped. Date, time, GPS coordinates. All wrong. All damning. And in the image, a man’s arm draped over her shoulder. She couldn’t see his face. Just a watch on his wrist—a stainless steel diver, same as Mark’s. ntr nightmare
The dream always started the same way: with the front door clicking shut.
She woke gasping, drenched in sweat. The clock said 3:18 AM. Beside her, Mark slept soundly, his chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. She reached out, fingertips brushing his arm. He didn’t stir. But under his sleeve, something cold pressed against
Downstairs, the building’s front door clicked shut.
Then the whisper. Not real—she knew it wasn’t real. But it coiled through the dark like smoke. “He knows, Lena. He just doesn’t want to believe it.” Same as the dream
Mark turned. His eyes were flat. Not angry. Worse: resigned. “I saw you,” he said. Not yelling. Just tired. The way a man sounds when he’s already packed his bags inside his head. “At the hotel on Lombard. You said you were working late.”