My Husband Spent Our Anniversary With Her (Her Marriage in Crisis #1)

Chapter 1

Elise

Bennett is already seated when I walk into Bellini's.

For a second, I stop just inside the door and let myself enjoy the sight of him without being seen. Eight years of marriage, eleven years of knowing him, and there are still moments when I understand exactly why my younger self had been reckless enough to believe this man could become home.

He has taken off his jacket. His tie is loose. The candle between the two place settings throws a soft amber line along his jaw. More important than any of that, his phone is face down on the table.

He looks up.

There it is.

The smile that belongs to me.

Not the polished one from magazine covers. Not the calm half-smile he gives analysts when they ask whether Halcyon Systems can survive another quarter of regulatory pressure. This one starts in his eyes.

"Happy anniversary," he says.

I cross the room before I can remind myself not to hope too much.

"You're early."

"Six minutes. I checked."

"Should I alert the press?"

"Absolutely not. Maren would turn it into a leadership campaign."

The name lands lightly because tonight is supposed to be safe.

Bennett stands, kisses my cheek, then changes his mind and kisses my mouth.

It is not hurried. It is not distracted.

My fingers curl against his shirt before I remember we are in the same restaurant where, eleven years ago, he spilled red wine on my white blouse and tried to blot it with a linen napkin while apologizing so fast I laughed in his face.

Bellini's has survived three owners, two renovations, a pandemic, and Bennett becoming rich enough to buy the entire block without checking his bank account.

We still come back because this is where he proposed, back when Halcyon was four people in borrowed office space and I was flying out twice a month with the Midwestern Chamber Collective.

"No work tonight," he says as we sit.

I glance pointedly at the phone.

"Off."

"Not silent?"

"Off."

"Who are you and what have you done with my husband?"

His smile flickers, but he reaches across the table and takes my hand.

"I know I've been bad lately."

Bad is such a small word for it that I almost laugh.

Instead I turn my hand under his and lace our fingers together.

"You've been gone a lot."

"I know."

"Even when you're home."

That one costs him. I see it in the tiny line between his eyebrows.

"I know that too."

The waiter arrives with prosecco before either of us has to decide what comes next. Bennett ordered the same bottle we had the night he proposed. I remember because we could barely afford it then and he pretended not to look worried when the bill came.

I remember so many things.

That has become one of the strange imbalances in our marriage. I hold the archive. Bennett holds the emergencies.

We toast.

"Eight years," he says.

"Eight years."

"And you're still here."

He means it as a joke.

Something in me goes still.

Bennett's thumb moves over my knuckles. "Elise?"

I could say it then. I could tell him that I have been wondering what it means that staying has become the thing he notices most about me.

Not my music. Not the students I teach on Tuesdays.

Not the way I changed my entire touring schedule when his company nearly collapsed in our second year of marriage. Staying.

But I don't want to turn this dinner into another postmortem.

"I'm hungry," I say.

He studies me for one beat too long and lets it go.

Dinner is beautiful because we know how to be beautiful together when nothing interrupts us.

There was a time when interruption was part of the romance.

In the first year we dated, Bennett's phone rang during everything: coffee, concerts, once during a kiss in the stairwell outside my apartment.

Back then he would glance at the screen and grin apologetically, and I would grin back because Halcyon was fragile and hungry and so was he.

I loved watching him build something no one else could see yet.

I had my own hunger then. Rehearsals started at ten and ended when the conductor stopped finding things to hate.

I lived out of a black suitcase half the month.

Bennett came to airports with bad coffee and sat on terminal floors beside me because he could not afford to miss a day of work but could afford forty minutes before security.

We were both busy. We were both becoming.

Somewhere along the way, his work became infrastructure and mine became negotiable.

Not because he announced it. Because his calendar had salaries attached to it, and mine had music.

Because investors used words like deadline and exposure while conductors used words like season and opportunity.

Because when one of us had to bend, I was proud that I could.

Pride is dangerous when it disguises erosion.

He tells me a ridiculous story about an investor who tried to explain cybersecurity to Bennett using a medieval castle metaphor.

I tell him about twelve-year-old Ava, who has finally stopped squeezing the neck of her cello like it personally offended her.

Bennett laughs so hard he nearly chokes on his wine.

"I miss this," I say before I can stop myself.

His expression softens.

"Me too."

"Do you?"

"Elise."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize." His grip tightens around my hand. "After the launch next week, I'm changing things. I mean it."

I want to ask what things.

I want specifics.

But he is looking at me the way he did when we were twenty-seven and sleeping on a mattress on the floor because his apartment had exactly one chair and the company had exactly zero paying clients.

So I choose faith over cross-examination.

"Okay."

The main course arrives. Bennett asks about the piece I have been practicing.

I blink at him.

"You remembered?"

"You think I don't hear you at night?"

"I think you're usually answering email."

"Elise."

This time he says my name like a warning and a plea.

"Rachmaninoff," I tell him.

"The sad one."

"That's not narrowing it down."

He smiles.

For the next forty minutes, my husband belongs entirely to the room we are in.

Then his phone lights up.

I stare at it.

He stares at it too.

"I thought it was off."

"It was."

"Apparently billionaires have different definitions of off."

He doesn't laugh.

The screen goes dark.

Then lights again.

MAREN VALE.

Bennett looks at me.

"Don't," I say.

The word comes out softer than I want.

The phone goes dark.