5. Odette
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Odette
We land at midnight and check into a villa three properties down from the one Laurence booked.
The concierge doesn’t blink when I pay in cash, doesn’t ask why a woman in a wrinkled blue dress and smeared mascara needs a room at one in the morning.
I’m grateful for the discretion. I’m too tired for questions.
Elliott takes the couch without being asked.
I lie in the bed and stare at the ceiling fan making lazy circles above me, and I don’t sleep.
I run through the confrontation in my mind over and over, rehearsing what I’ll say, how I’ll say it, what expression I’ll wear on my face when I look at my husband and his other family.
By five I give up on rest entirely and stand in front of the mirror, looking at the woman staring back at me.
She looks tired. Older than forty. There are shadows under her eyes and lines around her mouth that weren’t there yesterday, or maybe they were and she just never noticed. She looks like a woman who’s spent a long time slowly disappearing.
Soon I’ll walk into my husband’s vacation rental. Sit at his breakfast table. Face the woman he’s been fucking while I planned vow renewals and waited for him to come home.
I should be terrified. I should be falling apart. Instead I feel strangely calm, like the worst has already happened and everything else is just aftermath.
I dress in black from head to toe. Not only for mourning, though it’s that too, but because black is the closest thing to armor I own and today I need every scrap of it.
It’s ninety degrees outside, the humidity thick enough to press against the windows. I don’t care. I’m dressing for a funeral, because that’s exactly what this is.
The funeral of my marriage.
Elliott is awake when I come out of the bedroom. He’s sitting on the couch in the same clothes he wore yesterday, his hair mussed from sleeping upright, his jaw shadowed with stubble. He looks up when he hears me, and something crosses his face and is gone before I can catch it.
“You look like you’re going to war,” he says.
“I am.”
He stands. Crosses the room. Stops in front of me.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” I’m surprised by how steady my voice sounds. “This is something I need to do alone.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He nods, but he doesn’t move. He’s looking at me the way no one has looked at me in years, something soft and worried and fierce all at once.
“Odette,” he says, and then he pulls me into a hug.
It catches me off guard. One moment I’m standing there in my funeral clothes, armored and ready, and the next moment I’m wrapped in Elliott’s arms with my face pressed against his chest and his chin resting on top of my head.
He smells like sandalwood. Clean and warm and nothing like Laurence’s heavy cologne. Under my cheek his chest is solid, and I can feel the flat plane of it rise and fall, feel the muscle of his forearm where it bands across my back, holding me like I’m something he doesn’t want to drop.
My heart skips. Low in my stomach something pulls tight, an ache I have no business feeling, and heat crawls up the back of my neck.
I hate it. I hate that my body picks this exact moment to wake up, that it can feel anything other than rage right now, that a decade of nothing can burn off in the time it takes this man to put his arms around me.
I hate that I notice the strength in his hands.
That I want to turn my face into his throat and breathe him in.
That some greedy, ruined part of me is already leaning closer instead of pulling away.
He’s my husband’s brother. I’m four months pregnant with my husband’s child, standing in the wreckage of my marriage, and I’m counting the buttons on Elliott Fairbanks’s shirt and thinking about the skin underneath.
I should be ashamed of myself.
I am. I don’t step back.
“You’re going to be fine,” Elliott murmurs into my hair. “You’re the strongest person I know.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I’ve been watching you for fifteen years.” He pulls back just enough to look at my face. “I know you better than you think.”
We stand there for a moment, his hands on my shoulders, his eyes on mine. His gaze drops to my mouth. Just for a second, just long enough for my breath to catch and my thighs to press together on their own, and I think, if I lean in right now he’ll kiss me, and God help me, I want him to.
The wanting scares me more than anything Laurence ever did.
I step back. Clear my throat. Smooth my blouse over a body that’s betrayed me twice in five minutes.
“I should go,” I say. “Before I lose my nerve.”
“You won’t lose your nerve.” He smiles, small and sad. “That isn’t who you are.”
I walk out before I can say something I’ll regret.
The resort is beautiful in the morning light. Palm trees swaying. Birds singing. The ocean glittering blue and gold in the distance. It looks like paradise. It looks like somewhere nothing bad could ever happen.
Lies. All of it.
The villa Laurence rented is easy to find. I walk up the path like I belong there, like I have every right to be here, because I do. I’m his wife. This is still my life, even if he’s been living a different one without me.
The front door is unlocked.
I let myself in.
The villa is bigger than ours, with high ceilings and wide windows and furniture that costs more than most people’s cars. I move through the living room, past the kitchen, toward the terrace where I can see a table set for breakfast.
Two place settings. Two glasses of orange juice. A carafe of coffee steaming in the center.
I sit down.
The chair is wrought iron, warm from the sun already streaming through the windows. I reach for the carafe and pour myself a cup of coffee, black, the way I always take it. Then I set my hands on the table and wait.
I don’t have to wait long.
Footsteps on the stairs. A woman’s voice, soft and sleepy, saying something I can’t quite make out. Then she appears in the doorway, and everything stops.
She’s wearing Laurence’s shirt. The blue one, the one I bought him three Christmases ago because I thought it matched his eyes. It hangs to her mid-thigh, unbuttoned just enough to show that she’s wearing nothing underneath.
A little boy clings to her leg, half hidden behind it. Dark hair, dark eyes, that unmistakable dimple.
She sees me and freezes.
For a long moment neither of us speaks. We just stare at each other across the terrace, two women who’ve been loving the same man without knowing the other existed.
Then she straightens. Sets a protective hand on the boy’s head, easing him behind her. Lifts her chin.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Her voice is sharp. Defensive. She’s trying to sound confident, but I can hear the uncertainty underneath, the way it wavers on the last word.
I take a sip of my coffee. Set the cup down carefully. Look up at her with an expression I’ve been practicing for fifteen years.
“His wife,” I say. “The current one.”
She flinches. Just for a second, just a tiny flicker of something that might be shock or fear or recognition. Then her face hardens again.
“Laurence,” she calls over her shoulder, her eyes never leaving mine. “Laurence, you need to get out here. Now.”
More footsteps. Heavier this time. And then he’s there, standing in the doorway with two coffee cups in his hands and a smile on his face that dies the instant he sees me.
“Odette?”
His voice cracks on my name. He’s wearing linen pants and a white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, his hair still wet from the shower. He looks relaxed. Rested. Happy.
He looks like a man who thought he got away with it.
The coffee cups tremble in his hands. The one on the right tips, spilling a brown stain down the front of his shirt, and he doesn’t even seem to notice.
I smile. It doesn’t reach my eyes.
“Good morning, darling,” I say.