Married To My Husband’s Rival

Chapter 2: The Man Who Came Back

WREN POV

I turned around.

Seth Maren.

Six years and he still looked like someone who had never once been caught off guard in his life. He was taller than I remembered, or maybe I had just shrunk a little from the night. Dark suit, no tie, top button open. The kind of dressed up that looks effortless because it cost a lot of money to get there. His hair was shorter now. His jaw was sharper. Everything about him was just a harder, cleaner version of the boy I used to know.

He was looking at me with an expression I could not quite read. Not pity. I would have walked away from pity. Not amusement either. Something in between. Something steadier than both.

I opened my mouth.

"What are you doing here?"

"I was invited," he said.

Simple. No extra words. Just that.

"I didn't know you were back in New York."

"I've been back for two years."

Two years.

I stared at him. Two years he had been in this city and I had no idea. We had been breathing the same air for two years, probably passing through the same parts of Manhattan, and not once had his name come up, not once had anyone mentioned it to me. Two full years.

I did not know what to do with that information so I just let it sit there.

He did not mention Owen. Did not say a single word about what just happened in that room. No sorry about your husband, no I saw what he did, no are you okay. Nothing. He just stood there at a reasonable distance with his hands loose at his sides and after a moment he said quietly, "Do you want to sit down?"

"No."

He nodded once and stayed standing.

The corridor was empty except for us. The noise from the gala was far enough away that it felt like a different world. Outside the window the city kept moving, completely unbothered. I was still holding my heels in one hand and I realised I had no idea what to do with them so I just kept holding them.

Neither of us said anything for a moment.

I was waiting for him to bring up Owen. He did not.

I was waiting for him to say something uncomfortable and obvious. He did not do that either.

He just waited. Like he had time. Like standing in a corridor with a woman who just had her marriage announced as dead in front of three hundred people was a perfectly normal Tuesday night.

Then he said my name again. Just "Wren." But his tone was different this time. More careful.

"I know about Briggs Group," he said.

I blinked. "What?"

"I've been buying shares. Quietly. Twenty-two months."

I stared at him.

"I'm four months out from having enough for a shareholder vote."

He said it flat. No dramatics, no big reveal face, no waiting for my reaction. Like he was reading numbers off a page. Like this was just information he was handing me and what I did with it was up to me.

My brain was trying to catch up and failing.

"You've been buying shares in Owen's company."

"Yes."

"For almost two years."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because the numbers were interesting." He paused. "And because I had reasons."

I looked at him for a long second. "Did you know tonight was going to happen?"

Something moved across his face. "Not the specific night. No."

"But?"

"But I knew something was coming. The financials inside Briggs Group don't move the way a healthy company moves. Owen has been bleeding cash somewhere for over a year. Something was going to break eventually." Another pause. "I just didn't know it would look like this."

I laughed. It came out wrong, a short broken sound that didn't feel like laughing at all. "So you've been waiting for my husband's company to collapse while I was in there clapping for him."

"I've been positioning," he said. "There's a difference."

"Is there."

"Yes."

I looked away. Back at the window, at the city, at the cab that was still cutting lanes down there like it had somewhere urgent to be. My chest felt like something heavy was sitting on it and had been for the last twenty minutes and was not planning to move anytime soon.

"What do you want, Seth?"

He was quiet for exactly two seconds. Then he said, "I want to offer you something."

"What kind of something."

"If you want to make Owen regret every single choice he has ever made, I can help you do that. Properly. Completely."

I turned back to look at him. "And what do you get out of it."

"Something from you, in return."

"Which is."

He looked at me steadily.

"Marry me."

I actually waited for the rest of the sentence. I stood there for a full second waiting for the but, the joke, the alternative meaning. It did not come.

"Sorry?"

"Be seen with me. Let the world think we were already happening before tonight. It doubles the pressure on Owen, it protects you publicly, and it gives my acquisition a cleaner story." He said it like he was listing the features of a good investment. Calm. Practical. Like proposing marriage to a woman he had not spoken to in six years in a gala corridor was a completely logical next step.

"Are you serious right now."

"I'm always serious."

"Seth."

"Wren."

"I just watched my husband announce his pregnant girlfriend to a room full of people."

"I know."

"And your response to that is to propose to me."

"My response to that is to offer you a way to not be the woman he left behind. There's a difference."

I stared at him. My head was pounding. My feet were cold. I was still holding my shoes like an i***t and the whole night felt like something that was happening to someone else and I was just watching from a distance.

This was insane. He was insane. The answer was obviously no.

Seth had walked toward me when everyone else looked away. That was the thing I kept coming back to. Three hundred people in that room and not one of them followed me out here. Not one of them came to stand in this corridor. He did. And he was not being soft about it, not doing the sad eyes, not treating me like something broken. He was standing here talking to me like I was still a person capable of making decisions. Like I had options.

Like tonight did not have to be the end of something.

Maybe it could be the start.

I opened my mouth to say no.

My phone buzzed.

I looked down. Force of habit.

The name on the screen was Tasha. My best friend. The person who had been with me through every hard thing for the last eight years. I had not even called her yet. I had not called anyone. And she was already messaging me.

Four words.

I am so sorry.

I read it twice. I am so sorry. Not what happened, not I just saw, not call me. Just sorry. Already. Before I had said a word to her. Before I had even left the building.

Something went very cold in my chest.

How did she know already?

The question sat there and the answer that came with it was not one I wanted to look at directly. Not yet. Not tonight. But it was there.

I looked up at Seth.

He was watching me. Not pushing. Not asking. Just waiting, the way he had been doing since he walked down this corridor.

"Yes," I said.

The word came out quiet. Steadier than I felt. Seth held my gaze for a moment and nodded once, slow, like the answer had landed and he was taking it seriously.

I did not feel relief. I did not feel anything clean. I just felt the cold from the floor under my feet and the weight of the phone in my hand and four words from my best friend that were sitting in my stomach like something I had swallowed wrong.

I am so sorry.

Why was she sorry already.