From Rags to Riches: The Discarded Wife's Revenge

The Real Thing

Dominic

I found it difficult to close my eyes last night. Not because of the shoulder or the bruise I'd taken in the second period or the fact that we'd lost by two goals.

I couldn't sleep because of the way her voice sounded when she said the words "my ex-husband" in that dark room.

The way she said it told me everything I needed to know. There was no anger or sadness in her voice. Just the sound of someone who had been carrying something for too long and was running out of strength to hold it.

I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about the way her hands had gone cold during the game. I noticed it when I sat across from her on the clinic floor.

She'd been gripping her phone so hard her knuckles were white and when she finally let go, her fingers were shaking.

Whoever this man was, he'd done something to her that went beyond a bad marriage.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I didn't have to look to know who it was. Seven in the morning and she was already working.

"The coffee shop photo did better than expected. Twelve thousand shares overnight. Entertainment blogs are picking it up. People are asking who you were with."

"Good morning to you too, Nina."

"We don't have time for good mornings. That photo bought us curiosity but curiosity has a short shelf life. We need to give them more before they lose interest."

"More how?" I sat upright.

"Dinner. Tomorrow night. Somewhere fancy but not flashy. The kind of place where someone might spot you but it doesn't look like you wanted to be spotted."

"So another performance."

"That's literally what you signed up for, Dominic."

She wasn't wrong though.

"I'll send you the details. Pick her up at seven. And this time try to look like you actually want to be there."

She hung up before I could respond, which was typical Nina.

I got out of bed and went through my morning routine and the whole time I kept thinking about what Sienna had said on the clinic floor.

She'd started talking about her ex, then she shut the door on the conversation like she'd already said too much.

I wanted to know what was behind that door. Not because I had any right to but because the look on her face when she said "it's not important" told me it was the most important thing she wasn't saying.

The next evening I pulled up to her building at seven. She was waiting outside which surprised me. Most people in her position would have made me come up, made me wait, turned the moment into something it didn't need to be.

She was standing on the sidewalk in a coat I hadn't seen before, probably something Nina's team had provided, and she got in the car before I'd even come to a full stop.

"You didn't have to wait outside," I said.

"I didn't want you to see my apartment."

She said it so matter-of-factly that I almost laughed.

"It can't be that bad right?"

"I sold my couch last month to make rent. So yes, it's that bad."

I didn't say anything for a moment because I didn't know what to say to that. I lived in a penthouse with more rooms than I used and this woman was selling furniture to survive. The distance between our lives felt wider than it had five minutes ago.

The restaurant was closed by and within minutes, we were seated in a corner booth with enough visibility that someone might notice us but enough privacy that it looked natural.

"Have you eaten at places like this before?" I asked after we sat down.

"Marcus used to take clients here." She caught herself the second his name left her mouth, like she hadn't meant to say it out loud. "I mean, I've been to restaurants like this. Yes."

Marcus. She probably didn't mean to let that slip but now I had a name to go with the damage.

"Order whatever you want," I tried to cheer her up. Big mistake.

"I was planning to." She shot back coldly.

There it was again. That directness that didn't care about my money or my name or the fact that I could buy this restaurant without noticing it on my bank statement.

She talked to me the way she'd treated my shoulder that first night in the clinic.

We ordered and while we waited I asked her something I'd been thinking about since the clinic floor.

"How did you end up in sports medicine?"

She looked at me like she was deciding whether the question was part of the act or not. Then something in her shoulders loosened slightly.

"My mother has bad knees. She's been on her feet for fourteen years at the same restaurant and she refuses to stop working. I used to watch her come home barely able to walk up the stairs and I thought if I learned how bodies worked, maybe I could help her."

"Did you?"

"I tape her knees every Sunday when I visit. She complains the whole time and then walks better for the rest of the week and pretends it has nothing to do with me."

Something in my face shifted before I could control it. It wasn't the practiced smile I wore in public. I don't even know where this one came from.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing. I just wasn't expecting that answer."

"What were you expecting?"

"Something about ambition or career goals or wanting to work with elite athletes."

"I wanted to help my mother walk up stairs. Everything else came after."

When the food arrived, the conversation kept going in a way I hadn't anticipated. She asked me about hockey and I told her about the first time I stepped on ice, how I was six years old and my father had taken me to a public rink in Connecticut as a punishment because I'd refused to go to his business partner's dinner party.

He thought I'd hate it. I loved it so much I cried when he made me leave.

"A punishment," she repeated.

"Yep. My father believed that physical discomfort built character. He didn't expect it to build a career he'd spend the next twenty years being embarrassed by."

"He's embarrassed by you?"

"I chose a sport over a corner office. In my family that's the same as choosing failure."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "My mother has a photo of me in my graduation gown taped to the cash register at the restaurant. She shows it to every customer who stands still long enough."

"That must be annoying."

"No, actually it's the best thing anyone has ever done for me."

I picked up my glass and took a drink and changed the subject because I didn't know what else to do with what I was feeling.

We talked for two hours about nothing important and everything that mattered. She told me about growing up in Brooklyn and I told her about growing up in a house where silence was the loudest sound.

She made a joke about hockey that didn't land and then laughed at her own failure.

It was nothing like the coffee shop. That laugh had been part of the act. This one escaped before she had the chance to pull it back and the look on her face afterward told me she hadn't planned on letting me see that side of her.

For some strange reason, I wanted to hear it again.

When we left the restaurant I drove her home. The car was quiet and the city moved past the windows and neither of us said anything until we were a block from her building.

"That was convincing," she said, looking straight ahead.

"Which part?" I turned to look at her.

She looked like she wanted to say something but changed her mind at the last second and turned back to the windshield.

"All of it," she said quietly.

She got out of the car and walked into her building without looking back and I sat there for longer than I should have, watching the door close behind her.

My phone rang on the drive home. Nina, of course.

"We have a problem."

"What kind of problem?"

"A tabloid called my office twenty minutes ago asking for comment. They're running a story tomorrow morning."

"About what?" I reversed away from her building.

"About Sienna. They've been digging into her background. They found the divorce records."

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.

"What do the records say?"

"Enough for it to be damning. They're going to frame it a certain way, Dominic. A woman who left one man in the sports world and landed on the arm of another. You know how they'll spin it."

"Kill the story!"

"I can't kill it. It's already written. The best I can do is get ahead of it."

"Then get ahead of it!"

"I'm working on it. But you need to talk to her tonight. She needs to hear it from you before she sees it on her phone tomorrow morning."

I hung up and pulled into my parking garage and sat there with the engine running, trying to figure out why I cared this much about someone I'd known for less than two weeks.