Married To My Husband’s Rival

Chapter 5: Someone Was Watching

WREN POV

I see you, Wren.

Four words. Unknown number. No name, no introduction, nothing.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at those words for a long time. Then I went back to the photo.

Me and Seth. The gala corridor. His body already turned slightly toward mine, shoulders angled in a way I had not noticed when it was actually happening. I looked small in it. Like I was holding myself together with both hands and anyone looking closely enough could see it.

Someone had been looking closely enough.

The timestamp sat in the corner of the photo like a small ugly fact. Seventeen minutes before Owen finished his speech. Seventeen minutes before I had any reason to be in that corridor. Whoever took this was already there, already had their camera up, already had Seth in their frame.

They were watching before any of it started.

I got up. Walked down the hall. Knocked on Seth's door.

He opened it fast, like he had been awake. Which honestly did not surprise me. He looked the same as he always looked. Shirt on, no jacket, eyes fully alert. The kind of person whose brain never fully powers down.

"Sorry," I said automatically.

"Don't be. What's wrong?"

I held the phone out. Didn't explain. Just let him see it.

He took it. Looked at the photo. Then at the message. Then back at the photo. He was quiet for longer than I expected, just standing there in the doorway with the light behind him, staring at my screen like it owed him something.

"Can I keep this for ten minutes?" he asked.

"Yes."

I went back to my room and sat on the window seat and watched the city and tried not to think too hard about what any of this meant. The lights were sharp and bright out there. Normal. Everything out there looked completely normal.

He knocked exactly nine minutes later.

"The number is a burner," he said, handing my phone back. "Nothing traceable on that end."

"Okay."

"But the photo has metadata. Image file. It places the camera in the east upper balcony of the venue."

I frowned. "Where is that?"

"Staff access only. You'd need a venue badge to get up there or you'd need to know someone who had one."

"So either they work there or they paid someone."

"Yes."

He leaned against the doorframe. "Is there anyone you can think of who would want you to know you were being watched? Someone with a reason to rattle you before all of this started?"

I thought about it. Genuinely went through names. "No," I said. "I can't think of anyone."

He nodded. But something in his face shifted slightly. Just for a second. A small tightening around the eyes, like a thought crossed through that he did not say out loud.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing yet."

"Seth."

"I don't have enough to say anything useful right now. When I do, I'll tell you."

I wanted to push. But he looked like a man who had already decided and pushing would just waste both our time. So I let it go.

For now.

The next morning Seth's publicist called at eight-thirty. Her name was Donna and she had the specific kind of energy that made you feel like everything was under control even when it wasn't. She explained the plan in about four minutes flat. Coffee at a place called Allory near Columbus Circle. Corner table, window seat, photographers would be outside on the pavement. Wren walks in on Seth's left. They sit for forty minutes. They leave together.

"That's it?" I asked.

"That's it," Donna said. "Look comfortable. Don't pose. Just be there."

The place was small and warm and smelled like espresso and toasted bread. Seth was already at the table when I arrived. He stood when he saw me, which I was not expecting, and pulled out the chair across from him.

"You didn't have to do that," I said, sitting down.

"Habit," he said.

"From when?"

"Does it matter?"

I picked up the menu. "No. I guess not."

We ordered. Coffee for me, black, and something with almond milk for him which I filed away without meaning to. We talked. Quietly, easily, the kind of conversation that would look from outside like two people who already knew each other well. Which was the point. Donna had said just be there but I think what she meant was just be real and somehow that was actually easier than performing.

At one point Seth said something dry about the waiter's timing and I laughed before I thought about it. An actual laugh. Short and real.

He noticed.

He did not say anything about it. Just picked up his cup and looked out the window and the corner of his mouth moved in a way that was almost something.

Outside the window three photographers were trying to look like they were not photographers. They were bad at it.

When we left, Seth put his hand at the small of my back to guide me through the door.

I felt it everywhere.

Not in a big way. Just a quiet, specific awareness. The warmth of his hand through the fabric of my jacket and the way he did it naturally, no hesitation, like it was just something he did.

I did not flinch. I kept walking. But I noticed it and I could not un-notice it and that was something I needed to think about later when I was alone.

The photos were online by noon.

I scrolled through some of them on the couch in the living room while Seth was on a call in his office. The comments were all over the place. Some people thought it was too fast. Some people thought I looked happy and good for me. Some people were already building entire theories about a secret relationship that had been going on for years.

Owen's accounts had gone completely quiet.

I noticed that. Specifically. He had been posting fine yesterday, liking things, existing online like a man with nothing to hide. And then the photos of me and Seth went up and suddenly nothing. Radio silence.

Good.

Tasha called at two.

I watched it ring. Sat there with the phone in my hand and watched her name on the screen and let it ring out.

She called again at three.

Then at five.

Three calls. No voicemails. Just the calls themselves, like she thought if she kept trying eventually I would pick up and we could pretend those four words she sent the night of the gala were nothing. I am so sorry. Before I had called anyone. Before I had even left the building.

I was not ready to have that conversation yet. I did not know what I wanted from it and I did not know what she would say and I was not in a place where I could afford to fall apart again.

I put the phone face down.

Cal found me on the terrace just before seven. Seth's right hand. Quiet, sharp, the kind of person who hears everything and says very little. He had been polite since I arrived but this was the first time he had come looking for me specifically.

He looked like he had been told to say something he would rather not say.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

"There's something you should know," he said.

"Okay."

"A woman named Bree Fallon is in New York. She's been here three days. She called Seth this morning."

I kept my face neutral. "Who is Bree Fallon?"

Cal paused. Just half a second. But it was enough.

"Someone from Seth's past."

"How far past?"

"A few years."

"And she's important?"

He looked at me steadily. Not unkindly. Just straight.

"That's a question Seth should answer himself."

I held his gaze for a moment. He did not look away and he did not add anything else.

"Okay," I said finally. "Thank you for telling me."

He nodded and left.

I turned back to the city. The sun was going down and the lights were coming on one by one across the skyline and it was genuinely beautiful out here and I was not thinking about that at all.

Bree Fallon.

Someone important. Someone from his past. Someone who had been in the same city as us for three days without Seth mentioning it and who called him this morning while I was sitting in a coffee shop doing a press appearance and laughing at his dry jokes.

I needed to talk to him.

I just needed to figure out first what exactly I was going to ask.