My Husband’s Best Friend Destroyed Our Marriage (Her Marriage in Crisis #100)

1. Ursula

— ? —

Ursula

The champagne bottle weighs more than I expected.

Heavy glass wrapped in white satin ribbon, the kind they use for christenings because it photographs well and doesn’t slip when your palms are sweating.

My palms aren’t sweating. I’ve done this three times before, smashed bottles against the hulls of ships my grandfather designed and my father built and my husband now runs.

The ice queen of Manhattan high society does not get nervous at her own family’s events.

But my hands won’t stop shaking.

“Two minutes, Mrs. Rothwell.” The event coordinator touches my elbow, her smile bright and professional. She has no idea that I’ve been scanning the crowd for the past ten minutes looking for my husband. “We’re almost ready for you.”

“Thank you.” I adjust my grip on the bottle and try to look serene.

Guests line the deck of the Aurora, Rothwell Maritime’s newest flagship, and I can feel every single one of their eyes on the back of my neck.

The harbor wind catches my gown, pale blue silk that Bennett chose because he said it made me look like a figurehead. I thought it was romantic at the time.

Thirteen years of marriage, and I still can’t find him in a crowd.

I look for Renata too, the way I always do.

She’s always somewhere nearby, Bennett’s childhood best friend, the woman who taught me which fork to use at my own engagement dinner because she’d known him longer.

Years of friendship, hers and mine, built on top of a lifetime of hers and his, all of it wrapped in that warm smile she’s been giving me since college, the one that says we’re in this together, you and me, the two women who love Bennett Rothwell most. But tonight I don’t find her in the crowd. And I don’t find Bennett either.

I hand my clutch to Marisol. “Hold this. I’ll be right back.”

“The ceremony, Mrs. Rothwell...”

“One minute.”

The corridor below deck is narrow and white, humming with engine vibration.

If Bennett has slipped away from his own christening, there’s only one place he’d go.

The Aurora smells like fresh paint and new carpet and money.

My heels click against the polished floor as I make my way toward the owner’s cabin, the one Bennett insisted on designing himself, with the mahogany desk and the brass fixtures and the bed that’s bigger than it needs to be for a man who claims he only uses this boat for business.

The door is three inches open.

I hear her voice before I see anything. And in the half second before the rest of me catches up, I understand exactly why I couldn’t find either of them.

“She’s looking for you.” Renata’s voice, breathy and low. “She’ll be down any second.”

“Then we’d better be quick.”

Bennett.

My hand is on the door before my brain catches up. I push it open, and the world cracks down the middle.

My husband has Renata bent over the mahogany desk. Her dress, that gorgeous green thing I helped her pick out last month, is bunched at her waist. His hands are on her hips. Their eyes meet mine in the mirror above the desk.

She doesn’t stop.

I mean that literally. She sees me standing in the doorway, and her hips keep moving, and she smiles.

“Ursula.” Bennett’s voice is strangled. He pulls back, fumbling with his belt, his face going through expressions I’ve never seen before, panic, shame, something that looks almost like relief. “This isn’t what it...”

“It’s exactly what it looks like.” Renata turns slowly, smoothing her dress like we’re at brunch. Like I haven’t just walked in on my husband inside her. Like this is normal. “It’s been exactly what it looks like for a very long time.”

I can’t breathe.

The walls are pressing in and the boat is rocking and I have loved this man since I was twenty-four years old.

I have built my entire adult life around him.

I have defended him at dinner parties and supported him through every business failure and held his hand at his mother’s funeral and believed, really believed, that when people said our marriage was cold and transactional they were wrong.

I loved him. I love him still, even now, even with the evidence adjusting her earrings in front of me.

“Ursula, please.” Bennett steps toward me, his belt still undone. “Let me explain.”

“Don’t.” The word comes out flat. Dead. I don’t recognize my own voice. “Don’t touch me.”

“We should talk about this.”

“We really shouldn’t.”

I turn around. I walk back down the corridor. My legs work, which surprises me. My face works too, settling into the mask I’ve worn for all these years. The ice queen. The cold wife. The woman everyone thinks married for dynasty rather than love.

They were right about the cold part, at least. I’m freezing. I’m so cold I can’t feel my hands.

The champagne bottle is still in my grip.

The white satin ribbon is still perfectly tied.

The guests are still waiting on deck, and the cameras are still rolling, and in approximately ninety seconds I’m supposed to smash this bottle against the hull and christen this ship and smile for the photographers while my husband stands beside me like nothing happened.

The event coordinator beams when she sees me. “Perfect timing, Mrs. Rothwell. We’re ready when you are.”

I take my position at the rail. The microphone is live. The harbor stretches out behind me, glittering in the late afternoon sun. This is supposed to be a triumph. The Aurora is the biggest ship Rothwell Maritime has ever built, and I’m supposed to be proud, and Bennett is supposed to be beside me.

He appears at the top of the stairs, pale and sweating, belt buckled now, Renata three steps behind him with her lipstick freshly applied. She’s smoothed her hair. She looks perfect.

“It is my honor,” I say into the microphone, and my voice doesn’t shake, “to christen this vessel.”

I raise the bottle. I think about thirteen years of believing.

Twenty years of trusting her in my kitchen, at my table, in every photograph.

I think about all the times she touched his arm and I thought it was sweet.

All the times she stayed late after dinner parties to help clean up and I thought she was being kind.

All the times I told myself that men and women could be friends, that jealousy was ugly, that he was lucky to have such a devoted best friend who loved him almost as much as I did.

Almost.

The crowd is waiting. Bennett is watching me with terror in his eyes. Renata is still smiling that soft, patient smile, and I realize now that I’ve never actually seen her. Not really. I’ve been looking at a mask for two decades.

“I hereby name this ship,” I swing the bottle with everything I have, and it connects with the hull in an explosion of glass and champagne, spraying foam like blood across the gleaming metal, “the Renata.”

The silence is absolute.

“Because my husband’s best friend deserves something named after her.” My voice carries across the deck, amplified, clear. “Since she already has my husband.”

I set down the bottle neck I’ve been clutching. I turn. I walk toward the gangway without looking at anyone, not at Bennett with his mouth hanging open, not at Renata with her smile finally cracking, not at the guests who will dine out on this story for years.

The ice queen does not break.

The ice queen walks off the deck with her head high and her heart in pieces and she does not look back.