His Secret Instagram Account

Ten years.

The morning light filtered through our bedroom curtains, soft and golden, as Chris set the breakfast tray on my lap with that boyish grin I'd fallen in love with a decade ago. Pancakes shaped like hearts—slightly lopsided, but perfect. Orange juice in champagne flutes because he knew I had surgery later and couldn't drink.

"Ten years, Nat," he said, sliding back into bed beside me, his arm finding its familiar place around my shoulders. "Best decade of my life."

I leaned into him, breathing in his cologne—the same one he'd worn on our wedding day. "And many more to come."

He kissed my temple, and for a moment, everything felt whole. Solid. Safe.

Then his phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Chris pulled away, glancing at it. "I should shower before we head out for brunch." He squeezed my hand once before disappearing into the bathroom, leaving his phone behind.

Another buzz. Then another.

I smiled, reaching for it without thinking. We'd always been open like that—no passwords, no secrets. I just wanted to help him check if it was something urgent about his startup.

But when I picked up the phone, my finger hovering over the screen, I froze.

The notification wasn't from his usual Instagram account.

@Chris_M_Private.

Private?

My heart did a strange little skip. Chris had a private account? Since when?

The sound of the shower running filled the silence as I stared at the notification. My thumb moved almost on its own, using the face ID we'd set up together—his face, but it worked with mine too because we'd programmed it that way. No secrets, right?

The phone unlocked.

Two Instagram accounts. His public one—the one I knew, filled with our couple photos, his startup updates, pictures of us at charity galas and weekend hikes. Normal. Safe.

Then the other one.

@Chris_M_Private.

Only fifty followers. All strangers. No photos of me. Not a single one.

My hands started trembling as I scrolled to his most recent post. Last night. While I'd been at the hospital, finishing paperwork after a grueling twelve-hour surgery on a six-year-old with a congenital heart defect.

The photo loaded.

Chris. My husband. His arm around a woman with golden blonde hair and sharp green eyes. Her head tilted toward his shoulder. Both of them smiling like they shared a secret the rest of the world wasn't meant to know.

The caption: "Can't wait to see you again, babe ❤️"

The comments section was filled with heart emojis. Friends I didn't recognize. Inside jokes I wasn't part of.

I couldn't breathe.

My finger moved mechanically, clicking on her profile.

@SofiaTheArtist.

Twenty-eight. Painter. Brooklyn-based.

Her feed was a gallery of betrayal.

Photo after photo of Chris. Chris at an art gallery opening, his hand on the small of her back. Chris at a restaurant I'd never been to, leaning across the table to feed her a bite of dessert. Chris on a rooftop at sunset, kissing her—really kissing her, the kind of kiss that left no room for misinterpretation.

The time stamps burned into my retinas. Every single photo was taken during my night shifts at the hospital. When I'd been saving children's lives, he'd been building another one with her.

I scrolled further, my vision blurring.

There—a comment from Chris under one of her paintings. "You make me feel alive."

And another, under a photo of them at a jazz club: "My wife doesn't understand me like you do."

My wife.

Me.

The phone slipped from my shaking hands onto the white sheets. The bathroom door was still closed, the shower still running, and I sat there in our bed—our marital bed—with heart-shaped pancakes growing cold on the tray, trying to remember how to make my lungs work.

Ten years.

Best decade of his life, he'd said.

Whose life had I been living?

The water shut off. I heard him humming—actually humming—some tune I didn't recognize as he reached for a towel.

I looked down at the phone, at Sofia's beautiful face frozen on the screen, at my husband's arm wrapped around her like she was something precious.

Like I used to be.

The bathroom door handle turned, and I realized with sudden, crystalline clarity that the man about to walk out wasn't the man I'd married.

Or maybe he was, and I'd just never really known him at all.