12. Pierce
PIERCE
I had the answer. Hannah needed more time, that was all, and I could give it to her without breaking stride on the Mercer deal or pulling back from the donor event that Sienna had already lined up for October.
I could make room. I just had to be smarter about it, carve out a few hours here and there when the work allowed.
Monday morning I blocked off four hours on Friday afternoon.
There it was. Time for Hannah. I stared at the calendar entry I'd just created and felt the satisfaction of having solved the problem.
She wanted me to be more present, and I was making that happen.
Four hours. She'd be able to see that I was trying, that I understood what she needed, and then she'd come home.
My chest loosened a little for the first time in a day.
I got through Monday with a meeting at the site office and two calls that ran long.
Tuesday I had three investor calls and a lunch with Carter that I almost canceled, except he'd sent me a message saying we needed to talk and I figured I owed him that much.
Wednesday morning I woke up and checked my phone and found a message from Raleigh about a clause in the Mercer contract that needed reworking.
Not major. Just something that needed handling before we went to signatures Monday.
I sat at my desk and read the clause twice. It was fixable. An hour of work, maybe two if we went back and forth. I opened my calendar and looked at Friday afternoon. Four hours. Hannah's time.
The thing was, if I cleared the Mercer issue now, Friday would be completely free. No loose ends hanging over me, no distractions pulling my attention while I was with her. That was better, wasn't it? I could focus on her properly if the work wasn't nagging at me in the back of my mind.
I moved the calendar block to the following Wednesday and opened the contract file.
By the time I looked up again it was after six on Wednesday. The Mercer clause was done. The office was quiet, most of the staff gone for the day. My neck ached from being bent over the desk for God knows how long, and I rolled my shoulders back to try and loosen the knot that had settled there.
Hannah still wasn't home. Three days now, staying with Julia, and I didn't know what to do about it except give her space and time and hope that would be enough. I'd told her I would fix this. I'd figure it out. I just needed to understand what she actually wanted, and then I could deliver it.
Her wedding ring sat in my desk drawer where I'd been keeping it since she left it on the nursery shelf beside the gray elephant.
I pulled the drawer open and looked at it, the gold band with its diamond catching the light from my desk lamp.
It felt wrong, her ring being here instead of on her hand.
I should bring it to her. I should go to Julia's place and give it back, tell her to put it on and come home.
Except she'd left it there on purpose. She'd taken it off and walked out, and showing up with it now felt like I'd be missing the point all over again. She didn't want the ring. She wanted something else, something I hadn't figured out how to give her yet.
I shut the drawer.
"Pierce?"
I looked up. Sienna stood in my doorway, her coat over her arm and her bag on her shoulder like she'd been about to leave and then thought better of it. She looked uncertain, which wasn't like her. Sienna was the one person on my staff who never second-guessed herself.
"Hey." I leaned back in my chair. "You're here late."
"I saw your light on." She stepped into my office, and I noticed she shut the door behind her.
That sent a prickle of unease down my spine, but I shook it off.
Sienna had been working for me for four years.
We'd had a hundred late-night planning sessions in this office. The closed door didn't mean anything.
She set her bag down on one of the chairs across from my desk but didn't sit. "I wanted to check in. You've been working yourself into the ground the last few days."
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine, Pierce." She took a step closer, and I caught the faint scent of her perfume. Something floral. Expensive. "You look exhausted. When was the last time you ate?"
I had no idea. Lunch with Carter, maybe. Yesterday. "I'm not hungry."
"That's not the same thing." Her voice went softer, and she moved around the side of my desk. Too close. She was standing too close, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look at her. "You don't have to keep pushing yourself like this. You know that, right?"
My jaw tightened. "Sienna?—"
"I know Hannah's gone."
The words hit like a punch. I sat there, frozen, while Sienna looked down at me with something I couldn't quite read in her expression. Sympathy, maybe. Or something else.
"How—"
"I called the house to confirm the donor event details, and one of the staff told me she's staying with a friend." Sienna's hand came to rest on my shoulder, her fingers warm through my shirt. "I'm sorry, Pierce. I know that must be hard."
I should have moved. Should have stood up, put distance between us, told her this wasn't a conversation we were going to have. But I just sat there like an idiot while my brain tried to catch up to what was happening.
"It's temporary," I said.
"Is it?" Her hand slid down from my shoulder to my chest, and alarm finally cut through the fog. I pushed my chair back and stood, stepping around her to put the desk between us again.
"Sienna, what are you doing?"
She didn't look embarrassed. She looked determined.
"What I should have done a year ago. You're not happy with her, Pierce.
Anyone can see that. She doesn't understand you, doesn't understand what it takes to build something like what you've built.
She's a teacher who thinks hosting a dinner party is work. "
"Stop."
"I'm not wrong." She came around the desk again, relentless. "You need someone who gets it, who can stand beside you in this world and not just smile for the camera and then go home and complain that you work too hard. You need someone who's already in it with you. Someone like me."
She reached for me again, her hand going to my tie, and I stepped back out of her reach.
"Sienna. Stop."
"Pierce—"
"No." I backed away from her, one more step and then another.
My heart was pounding and my throat had gone tight, not from wanting her but from the sick realization of what this was.
How long had she been thinking this way?
How long had I been blind to it? "You're my event planner.
That's all. I don't know what you think this is, but it stops here. "
Her expression shifted. Hurt, or maybe anger. Hard to tell. "You're really going to stay with her? A woman who doesn't even want to be in the same house as you?"
"That's not your business."
"It is my business when I have to watch you tear yourself apart trying to fix a marriage that's already over," she said, and God, the certainty in her voice set my teeth on edge.
Like she knew. Like she had any idea what Hannah and I had, what we'd built together in six years.
"She left you, Pierce. She walked out and she's not coming back.
You know that. You're just too stubborn to admit it. "
"You need to leave." My voice came out harder than I meant it to, but I didn't take it back. "Now."
She held my gaze, her jaw set and her eyes bright. Then she grabbed her bag and coat from the chair and walked to the door. She stopped with her hand on the handle and looked back.
"When you finally figure out what you really need," she said, "I'll be here."
Then she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her.
I stood there in the silence she left and felt my hands shaking. Jesus. How had I missed that? How had I let it get to the point where she thought she could just?—
My stomach turned. I grabbed the edge of my desk and tried to get a grip, but my mind was racing. Had Hannah seen it? Was that why she'd left, because she'd picked up on something I'd been too oblivious to notice? God, what if she thought I'd been encouraging it? What if she thought I wanted?—
No. I shut that line of thinking down hard. Hannah knew me. She knew I wouldn't cheat, wouldn't even think about it. That wasn't why she left. I didn't know what was.
But I was paying attention now. I saw it now. And I had no idea how to fix it.
I grabbed my coat and keys and left the office.
I didn't know where I was going until I was already in the car, driving the familiar route back to the house Hannah and I had bought together six years ago.
Our home. Except it didn't feel like a home anymore, not with her gone.
It felt like a museum full of expensive things that meant nothing.
I let myself in through the front door and stood in the foyer, listening to the silence. The staff had gone home for the night. Just me and a house that felt too big, too empty, with her wedding ring in my desk drawer downtown and her somewhere across the city refusing to come back.
I should eat something. Should pour myself a drink, sit down, think this through logically and figure out what my next move was. Instead I walked upstairs, past the master bedroom and down the hall to the room we'd set aside for the baby.
The nursery.
I opened the door and stepped inside. The light from the hallway spilled in across the floor, just enough to make out the shapes of the furniture Sienna had picked out. White crib. Dresser beneath the window. Shelves with bins. A mobile. Everything pristine and perfect and completely wrong.
I'd told Hannah I would handle the nursery. She'd wanted to plan it herself, wanted to choose everything and make it ready the way she knew how, like she used to do with her classroom before the school year started. I'd told her we could hire someone, make it easier on her. Less work. Less stress.
I'd thought I was helping.
I stood in the dark and looked at the crib in the room we'd finished, and my chest went heavy. She'd asked me if I knew why she left, and I'd had an answer, and it had been wrong. I still didn't have the right one.
I sank down onto the floor and put my head in my hands. The room was cold. The whole house was cold without her in it, and I'd spent the last three days thinking I could fix this by blocking off time on my calendar like she was a meeting I needed to schedule.
I didn't know if she was coming back. I didn't know if I'd already lost her, lost the baby, lost the only thing in my life that had ever actually mattered. And I was sitting here in the dark in a nursery that wasn't hers, and I couldn't see what was right in front of me.
I was afraid. God, I was afraid.
The baby was coming in four months, and I didn't know if my wife would be there to hold our child. I didn't know if she'd let me be there either.
I sat in the dark and let the fear sink into my bones. No one to see it. No one to know.
Just me, and the room we'd finished.