Married To My Husband’s Rival

Chapter 6: Someone From His Past

WREN POV

I did not ask him about Bree that night.

I thought about it. Lay in that big quiet room staring at the ceiling and turned it over and over. Someone important. Someone from his past. But every time I got close to deciding I would go knock on his door, I stopped myself.

This is a deal. Not a relationship. I was not his girlfriend. I had no right to walk up to him and demand his history.

I kept telling myself that until I fell asleep.

The morning came grey and cold. I made coffee in the penthouse kitchen and took it out to the terrace and stood there wrapped in a jacket that was not warm enough, watching the city wake up below me.

I heard the terrace door slide open behind me.

“I should tell you something,” Seth said.

I turned. He had his own coffee. No jacket, like the cold did not register for him.

“About Bree Fallon,” he added.

I waited.

“We were together for almost a year. Three years ago.” He said it clean, no building up to it. “It ended badly. Mostly my fault.” He paused. “She’s not someone who lets things go easily. Her being in New York right now is not a coincidence.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I wanted you to know before you possibly ran into her somewhere. You deserved the warning.”

I looked at him. He was watching the city, not me. His jaw was set and his expression was the neutral one he wore when he was being honest about something that cost him something.

“Thank you for telling me,” I said.

He nodded once.

We stood there drinking our coffee. The wind came off the river and pushed at the edges of my jacket.

He said the relationship ended. Not that he was over her. Not that it was long ago and he had moved on. Just that it ended.

I noticed that. I noticed the difference and I was annoyed at myself for noticing it because it did not matter. This was a deal. He could have feelings for seventeen women and it would be none of my business.

I drank my coffee and said nothing about it.

“Owen’s lawyer called,” he said after a while.

“Mine called me too,” I said. “They want to start proceedings fast.”

“Are you?”

“No.” I looked at him. “I told my lawyer to slow everything down. I want every asset listed, every account verified. I’m not signing anything fast.”

Something shifted in Seth’s expression. Not a smile exactly. Something quieter than that. “Good,” he said.

“Don’t sound so pleased.”

“I’m not pleased. I’m just not surprised.”

I turned back to the city. “He’s rattled.”

“Very.”

“Good,” I said this time.

The charity dinner that evening was at the Harlow in Midtown. Big room, round tables, the kind of crowd where everyone knew everyone and nobody said exactly what they meant. Seth and I arrived together and the room did that thing rooms do, that small collective shift when two people walk in and everyone pretends they are not looking.

I wore a dark dress. Simple. Seth wore black and looked like he owned the building.

We were seated near the front. The food came in courses. I talked to the woman on my left about something I cannot even remember now and Seth talked to the man on his right and occasionally our elbows were close on the table and I was very aware of it without meaning to be.

It was fine. I was fine.

Until I looked up halfway through the main course and saw Owen.

He was standing near the bar on the far side of the room. Dark suit, a glass in one hand, not talking to anyone. Just standing there.

Looking at me.

My fork stopped moving.

He was not supposed to be here. This was not his usual circuit. Owen did tech and finance events, not arts foundations. He had no reason to be in this room tonight except that I was in this room tonight.

His expression stopped me cold.

It was not anger. Not that ugly tight look he got when he was performing hurt for an audience. This was something else. Something I had not seen on his face before. He looked like a man watching something leave and knowing he could not stop it.

Grief. That was what it was.

And I hated that I felt it. A small pull somewhere under my ribs, something sad and stupid that I did not want and could not fully shut off. Four years. You cannot love someone for four years and then feel nothing when they look at you like that. That is not how people work. I knew what he did. I knew what he chose. But my chest did not care about logic right now.

I kept my face still.

I did not look away first.

Then Seth’s hand covered mine on the table.

Not big, not dramatic. Just his hand on mine, warm and steady, and I knew without looking at the room that nobody was watching us right now. This was not for the cameras. He just did it. Because he noticed and this was what he did when he noticed.

I did not move my hand away.

Owen turned from the bar and walked toward the exit. I watched him go. He did not look back.

The pull in my chest faded slowly. Like a sound dropping out of range.

Seth’s hand stayed where it was for another few seconds. Then he picked up his fork and went back to his food like nothing happened and I did not know what to do with that so I did the same.

I excused myself after the dessert course. The restroom was down a short corridor off the main hall, small and marble, the kind they put in places like this where even the bathrooms are supposed to impress you.

I ran cold water over my wrists. An old habit from years back when I needed to reset. The cold helped. It always helped.

I looked at myself in the mirror. Eyes okay. Face okay. Mascara fine.

You’re fine, I told myself.

The door opened behind me.

I glanced in the mirror expecting one of the women from our table. Or honestly anyone. The universe owed me a boring ending to this night.

It was Lacey Pruitt.

Pale dress. Her pregnancy fully showing now, round and obvious under the fabric. She looked smaller in person than I remembered from the stage. Her eyes found mine in the mirror and she did not look smug. She did not look like the woman I had built in my head over the last few days.

She looked frightened.

Raw and genuinely frightened, like she had been working up to this moment for a while and was terrified now that it was here.

I turned around slowly. My hand was still on the edge of the sink.

Neither of us said anything for one full second.

Then Lacey opened her mouth and said, “I need five minutes.”

Her voice came out quiet. Almost steady, but not quite.

“Please,” she added. “I’ve been lied to too.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​