He Chose My Best Friend I Chose His Boss (Betrayal Revenge Upgrade #3)

Chapter 1

Naomi

The blanket lived on the top shelf of our closet, wedged behind Aaron's off-season sweaters, and every October I had to go looking for it like it was a lost sock. Five years of marriage and we still never remembered to move it somewhere sensible.

I stretched up on my toes, fingertips grazing wool, and pushed my hand deeper into the shelf.

That's when I felt it. Something that was definitely not a blanket. Something small, hard, velvety and squared-off, tucked back where nothing should have been. My fingers closed around it before my brain caught up, and I drew it out into the light.

A jewelry box.

Velvet. Deep navy, the kind that comes from a real jeweler and not a mall counter. The kind that costs something. It sat in my palm, and my heart did a slow, ridiculous flip.

Our anniversary was three weeks away.

I stood there in the closet, blanket forgotten, holding this little navy box like it might dissolve if I breathed too hard.

Aaron had hidden it. Aaron, who hadn't surprised me with anything in longer than I wanted to admit.

Aaron, who'd been coming home late and quiet and somewhere else behind the eyes for months now.

I'd told myself it was work.

My thumb hovered over the lid.

Don't, I told myself. Three weeks. Just wait three weeks and let him have the moment.

But I'd never once in my life been good at leaving a wrapped thing wrapped.

I opened it.

The hinge gave with a soft, expensive click, and the light caught what was inside, and I actually stopped breathing.

An emerald. A single brilliant green stone set as a pendant, teardrop-cut, hanging from a fine gold chain so delicate it looked like the stone was floating.

The emerald was the exact color I'd have chosen if anyone had ever thought to ask me — and here was the thing that undid me, standing in that closet: Aaron knew.

Emerald was my stone, my color, the one I drifted toward in every shop window and never bought for myself.

He'd noticed. After five years of me thinking he didn't notice anything, he'd noticed this.

I lifted it out.

The chain slid cool over my fingers, and the pendant turned slowly, throwing little chips of green light against the closet wall.

There was a tiny detail worked into the gold above the stone — a small, twisting flourish, almost like a leaf curling around the setting.

Distinctive. Something so unique, you'd know when you saw it again anywhere.

I held it up to my throat.

In the mirror, against my collarbone, it looked like it had always belonged there. Like it had been made for me. My eyes went bright and ridiculous and I let them, just for a second, just for me.

Then I made myself put it back.

Carefully. I laid the chain in its velvet groove, settled the emerald just so, and pressed the lid shut over the sound of my own foolish heart.

I slid the box into its exact spot on the shelf, angled the same way, and nudged the sweaters forward to hide it again.

I even smoothed the wool down with my hand, like I was tucking a secret back into bed.

Act surprised, I coached myself. You saw nothing. You have three weeks. On the night, you gasp, you cry a little, you let him be the hero.

I could do that. For this, I could absolutely do that.

Then I stood up and looked at myself in the closet mirror.

I hadn't done that in a while — really looked. Thirty two, tired around the eyes, my hair pulled back the way I wore it when I wasn't planning to be seen by anyone.

Aaron and I have been fighting a lot lately. Part of it was because he was never in a good mood around me. The other part was the dead bedroom. He hasn’t touched me in almost a year, and it made me feel so unwanted. I’ve been wondering if he still cared about me.

I’d wondered if he even remembered our anniversary. He’d forgotten it last year.

But there was color in my face now. There was something in my expression I almost didn't recognize.

Hope.

God, it was embarrassing how fast it filled me up. One little box and I was seventeen again, excited that the cute boy had noticed me from across a room. Except that boy was now my husband, and he’d been ignoring me for longer than I wanted to think about.

I let myself have it anyway.

Because it made sense, didn't it? The distance, the late nights, the way he'd flinch when his phone lit up and turn the screen down against his thigh — I'd been reading it all wrong.

He wasn't pulling away. He was planning something.

He'd gone quiet because he was working up to a gesture, and Aaron had never been good at gestures.

He got nervous. He overthought. He'd probably been carrying the weight of that little box around for weeks, waiting for the perfect moment.

I found the blanket, finally, and carried it downstairs, and the whole way I built us a future out of that navy velvet.

Aaron came home late again that night. Nine forty to be exact.

I heard the garage, then the door, then the long pause in the entry where he set down his bag and his keys and shed whatever face he'd been wearing all day. When he came into the kitchen he had the tie already loosened, top button open, and he looked worn straight through.

"Hey." He kissed the top of my head, quick, on his way to the fridge. "Sorry. Ran long."

"Everything okay?"

"Just work." He said it the way he said everything lately — flat, closed, a door pulled most of the way shut. He cracked a sparkling water and drank half of it standing at the counter.

Three weeks ago that tone would have carved something out of me. Tonight I just watched him and thought: You're terrible at this. You have a box hidden in the closet and you're standing there acting like the world's ending, because you don't know how to be sweet without giving yourself away.

It was almost endearing.

"You hungry?" I asked. "There's chicken."

"I ate." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm going to shower and crash. Big week."

"Sure." I smiled at him — the first real smile I'd given him in a month, and I watched it land on him and slide right off, like he didn't know what to do with it. "Get some sleep."

He hesitated in the doorway. For one second I thought he might say something, something more, and my stupid heart leaned toward him.

But he just said, "Night, Naomi," and went up.

I sat at the counter a long while after that, the house ticking and settling around me, and I turned the little box over and over in my mind.

I had spent five years being the one who made Aaron's life work.

The one who remembered his mother's birthday and smoothed things over with his clients and read the room he couldn't read and told him, gently, in the car afterward, what he'd missed.

I had built the version of Aaron that other people admired.

I had never once resented it, not really, because I'd believed it was a partnership — that the invisible work I did was seen, at least by him.

Lately I hadn't been so sure.

But now there was a box in the closet.

Now, maybe, he'd remembered too.

I finished my wine, rinsed the glass, and turned off the kitchen light. On my way up I stopped outside the closet, one hand flat against the door, and let myself feel it one more time — that warm, foolish, brimming thing.

Three weeks, I thought.

I had no idea I was counting down to the last good days I'd spend not knowing.