James came home two hours later.
Emma was still at the kitchen table, the abandoned dinner now cold on the counter. She'd rehearsed what she wanted to say about a hundred times, but when he walked through the door, all her carefully prepared words disappeared.
He looked tired. That bone-deep kind of exhausted that had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with carrying too much weight in your chest.
"I'm sorry," Emma said before he could speak. "You're right. About all of it."
James pulled out the chair across from her and sat down heavily. "I don't want to be right. I want to understand."
"I panicked." The words tumbled out faster than she meant them to. "David made the offer, and my first thought wasn't 'I should tell James.' It was 'What if he thinks I'm conside
