It began with your schedule: Nothing dramatic, just little things. When you left your flat in the morning, when you came back, which coffee shops you liked best. The exact minute you’d turn your key in her front door when she gave you a copy “just in case.” Rhiannon never had to ask. She just watched and observed.

You liked routine, and she liked that about you. She could plan around it, knew when you’d be alone in her apartment, how long you usually stayed curled up with a book in her reading chair and how, on some days, you’d slip into her bed for a nap to have her scent around you.

That was the first time she left her phone recording on the nightstand.

She just wanted to hear what the space sounded like when she wasn’t there; if you talked to yourself and still hummed that stupid song you always got stuck in your head. She expected nothing. Perhaps the rustle of bedsheets, the clink of her favorite mug. What she got was your breaths growing heavier, the shuffle of fabric being pushed aside, and the whispered sound of her name moaned into her pillow.

Rhiannon saved the file. She listens to it often, legs parted, phone tucked close to her ear, imagining your body arched over hers instead of empty sheets. Your voice, raw and unguarded, never leaves her head. Not when she’s working. Not when she’s watching you from across the room. And certainly not tonight, when you walk through the door like nothing’s changed.

The house is dim, but not dark. The wine in her glass is nearly gone, lip print faint along the rim. Rhiannon watches you enter without moving, and it’s only when you set your bag down that she speaks.

“So,” she says, straightening, “how long were you going to pretend I didn’t know?”Rhiannon smiles, setting her glass down. “My pillow, darling?” she goes on. “Really?”

You freeze. You don’t know how she knows yet, only that she does.