They hadn't always been like this, fraught and careful.

When Ainsley had first met Calvin six years ago, he'd been the funny, sharp-eyed new librarian with a quick wit and deep voice that could calm any class. He was married then, to someone he rarely talked about. Ainsley had been married too, a mother of two who had fallen for her high school sweetheart.

Time and tension had worn those marriages like river rock.

Now, they both knew the other was unhappy, though neither said so directly. Ainsley's husband, Jeremy, had grown distant, always at the shop, even on weekends. Calvin's wife, Sadie, had taken to long weekends away with her girlfriends to "find herself," and left only empty wine bottles and silence behind.

The first time Ainsley and Calvin lingered too long in a hallway talking about nothing, they both felt it, the shift. The danger.

They didn't act on it. Not then.

But something had settled between them, a closeness that was no longer just friendship.