Her Husband's Best Friend Planned Their Divorce (Can this Marriage Survive #7)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

The first time Annie Grisham sat across from Dr. Beatrice Lane, she thought the office looked like a place where women came to admit they were failing.

That was unfair, probably. The room was beautiful in the soft, expensive way that made everything feel curated to elicit maximum confidences.

Cream linen sofa. Pale oak bookshelves. A ceramic lamp with a shade that warmed the corners of the office instead of lighting it properly.

A small brass clock ticking on the side table, loud enough to make silences feel measured.

There were no diplomas visible, which Annie noticed because she was curious about Dr. Lane.

Her reflection hovered in the darkened window behind Dr. Lane’s shoulder: thirty-seven years old, hair twisted into a knot that had looked elegant at eight that morning and defeated by five, mascara smudged beneath one eye, mouth held in that flat line she had developed in the last year whenever she was trying not to cry in public.

Dr. Lane folded her hands over a leather notebook. She was somewhere in her early forties, with glossy brown hair cut to her shoulders and the kind of calm face that made other people want to confess things. “What brought you in today, Annie?”

Annie looked down at her own hands. Her wedding ring had spun slightly off-center. She turned it back.

“My husband’s best friend,” she said, then immediately hated how small it sounded. “A woman.”

Dr. Lane waited.

Annie gave a brittle laugh. “That makes me sound ridiculous.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.” Annie shifted on the sofa. “Because a sane adult woman should be able to say, ‘My husband has a close female friend,’ without sounding like she’s auditioning for a jealous wife documentary.”

“What is her name?”

“Brooke.”

The name alone put tension into Annie’s throat.

Brooke Halpert had been in Nathan Grisham’s life since he was eleven years old and still had braces, a bowl cut, and a mother who worked double shifts at the hospital.

Brooke knew every version of him Annie had never met.

Brooke knew the boy who got suspended for punching a seventh grader who mocked his shoes.

Brooke knew the teenager who slept in his car the summer his father left.

Brooke knew the college student who ate microwave noodles and swore he was going to build something important one day.

Annie knew the man who had built it.

She had met Nathan at twenty-nine, after the past had already hardened into stories he told with a shrug.

By then he was brilliant, relentless, charming when he wanted to be, and on his way to making the kind of money that turned old pain into branding.

Annie had loved him before the money became real.

She had loved him through late nights, bad leases, cheap takeout, and the first terrifying year of his company when he had come home looking hollow and slept with his phone under his pillow.

Brooke had been there too.

That was the part Nathan always said as if it explained everything.

“She was there before you, Annie. She’s family.”

Family, Annie had learned, was the word people used when they wanted to explain loyalty without boundaries.

“How long have you been uncomfortable with Brooke?” Dr. Lane asked.

Annie pressed her palms into her knees. “Since our wedding, maybe. Before that, if I’m honest. She gave a toast at the rehearsal dinner about how she used to think she and Nathan would end up together, but life had other plans.” She smiled tightly. “Everyone laughed.”

“Did Nathan?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“I smiled because a roomful of people were watching me.”

Dr. Lane made a note. “What has changed recently?”

Annie looked toward the clock. Five minutes in, and already the question had slipped beneath her ribs.

Recently.

Recently, Brooke had become impossible to avoid.

Brooke came to Sunday dinners with Nathan’s mother.

Brooke had keys to the lake house because she “managed the repairs” when Nathan was traveling.

Brooke sent articles to Nathan about emotional burnout in entrepreneurs and copied Annie, as if Annie were an employee who needed training.

Brooke knew the name of Nathan’s cardiologist, the code to his office gym, the password to the streaming account Annie had set up and then lost access to when Brooke “helpfully” organized all their subscriptions.

Recently, Brooke had started texting Nathan every morning.

Recently, Nathan had also started turning his phone face down.

Recently, Annie had begun asking questions that made him tired before she finished asking them.

And recently, after one particularly ugly argument, Brooke had sent Annie the name of a therapist.

I’m saying this with love, her text had read. You seem unhappy in a way that’s bigger than Nathan. I found someone discreet. She works with women navigating relationship anxiety. You deserve support.

Relationship anxiety.

Annie had stared at those words for ten full minutes while Nathan showered upstairs.

“I think she wants me gone,” Annie said.

Dr. Lane lifted her eyes from the notebook. “Gone from the marriage?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The room seemed to tighten around Annie.

Because Brooke touched Nathan’s arm like she owned the right to reassure him.

Because she laughed too hard when Annie made a mistake.

Because she remembered every food Nathan hated but conveniently forgot Annie’s allergy to walnuts until the dinner party where Annie’s throat started to itch and Brooke said, horrified and loud, Oh my God, I thought you were just avoiding fatty foods.

Because Brooke had once told Annie, after two glasses of wine, that Nathan needed someone who understood the pressure he was under instead of taking everything personally.

Because last month, at a charity gala, Annie had walked out of the restroom and seen Brooke adjusting Nathan’s bow tie. Her fingers had rested at his throat, intimate and practiced. Nathan had stood still for it.

When he saw Annie, he smiled like nothing in the world was wrong.

Brooke smiled too.

That smile had followed Annie home.

“She has a way of making everything seem innocent,” Annie said. “If I object, I look insecure. If I stay quiet, she gets closer. Nathan says she’s just intense. That she doesn’t have many people. That I’m misreading her.”

“And are you?”

Annie looked up sharply.

Dr. Lane’s expression remained neutral.

“I don’t know,” Annie said, and that was the worst part. “I used to know. I used to be able to tell when something was off. Now I hear myself explaining things and I sound dramatic even to me.”

“What does Nathan say when you try to talk to him?”

Annie swallowed.

The argument had started over a calendar invitation.

Brooke had scheduled dinner with Nathan on a Thursday night at Marchand, the French place where Annie and Nathan had gone for their fifth anniversary.

The invitation popped up on the tablet in the kitchen because Nathan’s calendar synced to everything in the house.

Annie saw Brooke’s name, the restaurant, the time. Seven-thirty.

No mention of Annie.

When she asked him about it, Nathan had barely looked up from the email he was reading.

“It’s business-adjacent,” he said. “She wants to talk through the foundation event.”

“At our anniversary restaurant?”

That got his attention. “Our anniversary restaurant?”

“Marchand.”

“Annie.”

The warning in his voice made her feel childish before he said another word.

“What?” she asked.

“It’s a restaurant. We don’t own it.”

“I didn’t say we own it. I’m saying it’s strange that she booked dinner with you there and didn’t invite me.”

“She didn’t book some romantic dinner. She picked a place near my office. It’s work.”

“There are forty restaurants near your office.”

“She likes Marchand.”

“So do I.”

Nathan exhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He did that often now, as if marriage to Annie had become a headache he could not medicate. “I can’t do this every time Brooke’s name comes up.”

“I’m asking a fair question.”

“You’re asking whether my oldest friend is trying to seduce me by choosing a bistro.”

“She wants your attention.”

“She has my attention. She’s my friend.”

“That’s exactly the problem.”

His eyes cooled. “No, the problem is that there’s never a version of this where I’m allowed to care about someone besides you without you making it ugly.”

Annie had stood there, the kitchen island between them, feeling something inside her go quiet.

“That’s what you think I’m doing?”

“That’s what it feels like.”

“And what does it feel like when she treats me like an inconvenience in my own marriage?”

“She doesn’t.”

“She does.”

“She includes you in everything.”

“She performs including me.”

Nathan’s jaw tightened. “Listen to yourself.”

There it was. The phrase that always ended the conversation because Annie did listen. She heard the strain, the accusation, the edge of hysteria that had crept into her voice after months of being reasonable while Brooke’s shadow stretched farther across their life.

Nathan closed his laptop. “Brooke thinks you might benefit from talking to someone.”

The humiliation landed so cleanly that for a moment Annie could not speak.

“Brooke thinks,” she repeated.

“She’s worried about you.”

“Brooke is worried about me.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“You weren’t worried until she gave you the vocabulary.”

“That’s unfair.”

Annie laughed once, hard and humorless. “No, Nathan. Unfair is your best friend diagnosing your wife because your wife doesn’t enjoy being slowly pushed out of her own life.”

He stared at her then, and the look on his face frightened her because it was not anger anymore. It was pity.

“I don’t know how to help you when you get like this,” he said.

Like this.

Annie slept in the guest room that night. In the morning, there was a text from Brooke.

I know things are tense. Please don’t let pride keep you from getting support. Dr. Lane is excellent.

Annie did not tell Nathan she made the appointment.

It felt like surrender.

Now, sitting in Dr. Lane’s office with her coat folded beside her and her purse tucked against her hip, Annie heard her own voice describe the argument and wondered which details sounded sane.

The calendar. The restaurant. The bow tie.

The texts. The walnut salad. Tiny things. Petty things. A mosaic made of crumbs.

Dr. Lane listened without interrupting. That was almost worse than skepticism.

When Annie finished, Dr. Lane set down her pen. “May I ask a direct question?”

“Please.”

“Do you want to save your marriage?”

Annie’s answer came too quickly. “Yes.”

The word hurt.

Because she did.

Despite everything, despite the coldness creeping into Nathan’s voice, despite Brooke’s constant presence, despite the awful new habit Annie had developed of checking his face whenever Brooke entered a room, she loved her husband.

She loved the man who used to find her in crowded rooms and wink like they were sharing a secret.

She loved the man who knew she hated carnations and bought her peonies because she once mentioned they looked lush and ridiculous.

She loved the man who, during their first winter together, had driven forty minutes through sleet because she was sick and wanted wonton soup from one specific place that didn’t deliver.

That man still existed. She saw flashes of him. A hand on the small of her back in a crowd. His sleepy voice asking if she wanted coffee. The way he still reached for her in the night sometimes, before memory or resentment pulled him away.

“I want us back,” she said. “I just don’t know if there’s an US left without Brooke in the middle of it.”

Dr. Lane nodded slowly. “Then perhaps the work begins there.”

“With Brooke?”

“With you.”

Annie frowned.

Dr. Lane’s tone stayed gentle. “You can’t control Brooke. You also can’t control Nathan’s attachment to Brooke. What you can explore is your response to that attachment, and whether your fear is causing you to behave in ways that create distance between you and your husband.”

The words were reasonable. That made them more dangerous.

“So it’s my fault,” Annie said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But that’s the idea.”

“No. The idea is that distress can distort perception. When we’re afraid of losing someone, we sometimes start scanning for threat everywhere. That scanning can become exhausting for the person we’re afraid of losing.”

Annie’s cheeks burned. “I’m not inventing this.”

“I believe that you’re in pain.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

Dr. Lane leaned back slightly. “No, it isn’t.”

For the first time since Annie arrived, the silence felt less like an invitation and more like a verdict.

Dr. Lane glanced at the clock. “We have a few minutes left. I’d like you to try something before our next session.”

“Our next session?”

“Only if you’d like to continue.”

Annie looked at the door. She wanted to leave. She wanted to stay. She wanted someone to tell her she was right. She wanted someone to tell her she was wrong in a way that would let her stop fighting ghosts.

“What kind of something?” she asked.

“For one week, don’t raise Brooke with Nathan unless he brings her up first. When you feel the urge to challenge him, write down the trigger, the thought, and the fear underneath it. Bring the notes here. We’ll examine them together.”

Annie stared at her. “You want me to stop talking about the thing that’s hurting me.”

“I want you to create enough quiet to notice what is happening inside you before it becomes a conflict between you and Nathan.”

That sounded healthy. It sounded exactly like something a good therapist would say.

Annie agreed because she was tired, because the office was warm, because Dr. Lane’s voice had a way of sanding down the sharpest edges of her resistance.

By the time she stepped back onto the sidewalk, the city had gone blue with early evening.

Cars hissed along wet pavement. Her phone had three missed texts.

One from Nathan. Running late. Don’t wait dinner.

One from Brooke. Thinking of you today. Hope the appointment helped.

Annie stopped walking.

A woman bumped her shoulder, muttered an apology, and continued down the block.

Annie read Brooke’s text again. Hope the appointment helped.

She had not told Brooke she booked it.

She stood beneath the awning of a closed florist while rain misted the ends of her hair.

Her thumb hovered over the screen. She could ask how Brooke knew.

She could screenshot it and send it to Nathan.

She could march back upstairs and ask Dr. Lane whether patient confidentiality meant anything in her office.

Instead, Annie locked the phone and put it in her purse.

One week, Dr. Lane had said. Don’t raise Brooke unless Nathan brings her up first.

Annie walked to the curb and lifted her hand for a cab, feeling the first thread of something cold pull tight around her ribs.

Across the street, in the third-floor window of the office she had just left, Dr. Beatrice Lane stood half-hidden behind the curtain, looking down at the street, with a phone pressed to her ear.