Married To My Husband’s Rival

Chapter 1: The Night Everything Ended

WREN POV

"You look beautiful tonight."

Owen said it right before we walked in. He stood in front of me in the hotel lobby and fixed the strap of my dress with two fingers and smiled. That old smile. The warm one from early on, the one I used to think was just for me.

"You sure?" I asked, tugging the hem a little. "It is not too much?"

"It is perfect," he said. "You are perfect."

I believed him.

I believed every single thing about tonight.

The Meridian Foundation Gala was the kind of event that made you feel like your life was finally going somewhere. Tall ceilings, soft gold lighting, champagne in glasses so thin they looked like they would snap if you breathed wrong. Women in floor-length gowns and men who had their suits made for them, not bought off a rack. Three hundred people packed into one beautiful room and all of them there to celebrate Owen.

My husband. The man being honoured tonight for his philanthropy work.

I had watched him rehearse his speech twice in our bedroom mirror. Both times he looked at me after and asked "How was that" and both times I said "Perfect" and I meant it. He was going to do well up there. I knew it.

I was standing near the left side of the stage when they called his name. The applause hit the ceiling. I clapped hard, hard enough that my palms stung a little, and I was smiling because I was proud. Actually proud. The genuine kind, not the performed kind.

He walked up in that dark navy suit I picked for him two weeks ago and he looked exactly like the man I married. Sure of himself. Steady. Like nothing in the world could rattle him.

He thanked the foundation. Thanked the board. His voice was smooth and easy and the room loved him. I could see it on their faces. People were leaning in slightly, smiling, nodding.

Then the applause died down.

And he kept talking.

"There's something else I want to share tonight," he said. "Something personal."

His voice shifted. Softer. The intimate register he uses when he is saying something he wants people to feel.

I tilted my head.

Okay. Personal. Fine. Maybe his late father. Maybe something about the company's next chapter. I was already preparing my face for when people glanced over at the proud wife by the stage.

Then a woman came out from the side of the stage.

Young. Pretty in a quiet way. A simple pale dress.

Very, very visibly pregnant.

Owen's hand reached for hers.

The room inhaled. Not loud. Just this collective breath, like three hundred people all pulled air in at the exact same second and then held it.

My brain stalled.

Not slowly. Not with any kind of warning. It just cut out. Like a phone screen going black.

"This is Lacey," Owen said. "And we're expecting a child together."

He paused. Let it sit there.

"I want to apologise to anyone this hurts. My marriage has been over for a long time."

My marriage has been over for a long time.

He said that. Out loud. To this room. To the crystal glasses and the soft lighting and the people who had shaken my hand an hour ago and asked how Owen and I were doing.

He said it like it was a simple fact. Like he had checked it against a date and confirmed it.

Like I already knew.

The woman beside me grabbed my arm. I have no idea who she was. Some colleague's wife, somebody's plus one. Her grip was tight and I could feel her staring at the side of my face and I could not look back. Could not look anywhere. My whole chest had gone tight and my ears were ringing and the room was too bright suddenly.

"Wren," the woman whispered. "Oh honey."

I pulled my arm free.

I bent down. Took off my left heel. Then the right. The marble floor was cold under my bare feet and I registered that fact from somewhere far away, like a detail about someone else's life.

Then I walked.

Nobody stopped me. The crowd split as I moved through it, people stepping back, faces turning. Some of them said my name softly. Some of them just watched. I didn't look at any of them. I kept my chin level and my eyes straight and I moved through that room like I was going somewhere specific, like I had somewhere to be, like I was not completely falling apart on the inside.

I got to the corridor outside the main hall and I kept going.

All the way to the window at the far end. Floor to ceiling glass. The whole city laid out below me like it was showing off.

I stopped there.

Down below, a cab cut across three lanes without signalling. A food delivery guy on a bike weaved between two slow cars. Someone was walking a dog on the sidewalk like it was just another night. The traffic lights changed from red to green and nobody down there knew. Nobody down there was standing barefoot on cold marble holding two expensive heels in one hand while their marriage collapsed behind them in a room full of witnesses.

I pressed my free hand flat against the glass.

Cold. Obviously cold.

I don't know why I kept noticing the cold.

Four years.

Four years of learning how he took his coffee and which side of the bed he needed and the specific silence he got when a deal went badly and he wasn't ready to talk. Four years of his family's Christmas dinners and his colleagues' birthdays and adjusting my whole schedule around his. Four years of choosing him first, every single time, without even thinking about it.

And he stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom and rehearsed that speech.

He fixed my dress strap.

He told me I was perfect.

And then he walked me into that room and said our marriage had been over for a long time.

I was not going to cry. I told myself that clearly. Not here. Not while three hundred people were twenty meters away probably talking about me right now. Not for him.

Not yet.

I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough that the noise from the gala had dropped to a low background murmur. Long enough for the cold from the floor to crawl all the way up my legs.

Then I heard footsteps behind me.

Not rushing. Not the quick steps of someone coming to check on me. These were slow and even and deliberate. The walk of someone who chose to come this way. Who knew exactly where I was.

I didn't turn around.

Something in me just could not move.

The footsteps stopped a few feet behind me. Silence for one full second. Then a voice said my name.

"Wren."

Every muscle in my body locked up.

I knew that voice.

I had not heard it in six years but I knew it immediately, the same way you know a song from the first two notes even when you haven't thought about it in years. Something deep and automatic in my chest recognized it before my brain had a chance to catch up.

Six years. No calls. No messages. Nothing. And now he was standing behind me in this corridor on this specific night, of all the nights in the world, saying my name like he had been saving it up.

I still didn't turn around.

I wasn't sure what I would do if I did.