Juno was shivering. She needed to get up, move to where it was warmer. Hems Corner, she thought. No, the blue room; she could sleep in the blue room right off Nigel’s den. When was the last time she’d slept in a bed? She groaned as fresh pain erupted in her stomach. She’d stay here for a little while longer, until she was strong enough, even if the memories were bad.

Chad Allan wasn’t the reason her marriage and her motherhood ended, no. He was just at the ugly end. The whole thing had felt like a roller-coaster ride to Juno, one that she realized she didn’t want to be on until it was too late. The adrenaline of secrecy paired with an angry woman. And Juno was angry—at Kregger. Mostly. Hadn’t she put her life and career on hold to raise his sons? She’d done everything right, everything to benefit him—and yet by the time she met Chad, it seemed that Kregger barely looked at her. He looked at everything but her, in fact: the television, the paper, his laptop.

Chad’s son had seen them together, walking out of a Motel Six hand in hand as he drove to his part-time job at the art store. Chad’s wife, Julianna, filed a civil suit against Juno for sleeping with Chad, her client; and, compounded with the criminal charges brought against her, she didn’t stand a chance and neither did her marriage. Good ol’ Chad had played victim to save his marriage, the poor, wounded target of a predatory therapist who took her own issues out on her clients. While Chad reconciled with his wife on a trip to Tahiti, Kregger moved into an apartment with the boys. With the house in foreclosure, Juno slept on a friend’s couch and waited for her sentencing. Kregger would never forgive her; she knew that. She forgot herself, as people often do. She forgot herself for three months of mediocre sex with a man whose favorite catchphrase was “No soup for you!”

She reached for her water, her throat starting to tickle and her mouth filling with the dust of the crawl space; Juno felt like it was choking her. She was tired enough to sleep again, but her thoughts were keeping her wired. Chad Allan had come for a visit.

All these years later and Juno could still feel his lips on her neck, the little circles his tongue would trace across her pulse and down the steep incline that dipped into her collarbone. He was funny; that’s what she liked most about him. He made her laugh and he made her come: win-win. They hadn’t loved each other, and they hadn’t needed to because it was all for fun. She was in a fever then, crossing the line, wanting more, more, more.