About this book

I'm a good man. I love my wife. Our life together is steady, comfortable, and exactly as predictable as I've let it become. I take my ring off when I grade papers because it cramps my hand, and that's the only reason.

I noticed Sammi the first week of the semester. Front row, two seats left of center. Chestnut hair, hazel-green eyes that hold contact a beat too long. Skirts that land mid-thigh in the late summer heat and ride up when she crosses her legs. I started sitting behind my desk during lectures and told myself it was because my back hurt.

I'm a psychology professor. I know what denial looks like.

She walks into my office on a Friday afternoon while my wife is out of state and the building is empty. She doesn't take the chairs. She sits on my desk. She asks questions that sound like small talk and feel like a hand closing around my throat. She knows my schedule. She knows my wife's name. She's been watching me the way I've been watching her, except she isn't pretending she hasn't.

I can name every technique she's using, the proximity escalation, the conversational anchoring, the silence she lets do the work her words don't. I can identify the pattern, label the manipulation, and explain exactly why it works on a whiteboard with diagrams.

I can also feel my pulse in my throat and my ring sitting on the corner of my desk three inches from her bare thigh.

Knowing the name of the trap doesn't keep you out of it when you want what's on the other side.