Replaced by Her Billionaire Husband

Chapter 1 – June

JUNE

"Not there—the study. All the books go in the study." I catch the mover mid-stride, a box of my old teaching materials balanced on his shoulder, and redirect him down the hall. "The one with the built-in shelves. Yes, that one."

He nods and trudges off, and I press my fingertips into the small of my back, rolling my shoulders.

Sixteen years of marriage and I've orchestrated four moves.

This one should be the easiest. The penthouse came half-furnished, the decorators did most of the heavy conceptual lifting, and all I have to do is stand in the middle of our new life and point.

Still. Pointing is exhausting when you're the only one doing it.

"June? Where do you want?—"

"Kitchen boxes in the kitchen, Mark." I laugh despite myself. "I know that one's a stretch."

Mark grins at me. He worked our last move too, and the one before that. At this point he knows how I take my coffee and that I alphabetize the spice rack. Some people have family. I have a moving company.

I wander into the living room, if you can call forty feet of windows and a view of the entire skyline a "living room.

" Matt bought this place in a single afternoon.

Called me from the broker's office, asked if I liked the photos, and signed before I finished scrolling.

Ten years ago he would have brought me to see it first. Would've watched my face while I walked through the rooms, reading me, gauging whether I could picture our life there.

Now he sends a link.

But I don't want to think about that today. Today there's a couch that costs more than my first car and movers who know my name, and somewhere in this apartment my husband is?—

"Honey, where's the—never mind, found it."

There he is. Matt comes out of the bedroom with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear, carrying nothing.

He catches my eye and gives me that half-smile, the one that apologizes and charms at the same time.

He's been fluent in that smile for about three years now.

"Mm-hm. No, tell Denise the spring line has to be locked by Friday." He covers the phone with his palm. "Baby, the rug people are asking where the?—"

"Den study. Left of the stairs."

He uncovers the phone. "Sorry. Yeah. No, I know what she said, I'm telling you it's wrong?—"

And he's gone again, swallowed by the hallway.

I stand in the middle of the room and breathe.

The new line. I know, I know. The women's stores are a massive expansion, the biggest risk the company's taken since the flagship, and he's been dreaming about it for two years.

He told me the whole plan over wine in our old kitchen, eyes lit up the way they used to get when we were young and broke and everything was ahead of us.

He'd grabbed my hand across the table and said, You're going to love this, June.

Women's line means we need a woman's eye. That's you.

I believed him. I still sort of believe him. I quit teaching for this life, for him, and most days I don't regret it. Most days.

"Ma'am? The mirror?"

"Above the mantel. Please don't let it touch the wall without the pads."

The afternoon slides by in cardboard and tape.

I direct, I unpack, I hang the first photograph—our wedding, the two of us laughing at something off-camera, his tie already loose—in the hallway where I'll pass it every morning.

Around four, Matt reappears, and this time the phone is in his pocket.

He surveys the living room, the stacked boxes, the rug unrolled at the wrong angle, and then looks at me.

"You did all this."

"We did all this. Mark did the heavy parts."

He crosses to me and takes my face in his hands. His palms are warm. Whatever else has changed, my body still remembers him before my brain does, and I lean in before I've decided to.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"For what specifically? There's a list."

"For today. For being on the phone through all of it.

" He kisses my forehead, then the corner of my mouth, then actually kisses me, slow and deliberate, and for a second the apartment and the boxes and the skyline all fall away.

"This place is going to be beautiful because of you. You know that, right?"

"I've been told I'm decent with a floor plan."

"You're decent with everything." He rests his forehead against mine. "Once the spring line launches, things calm down. I swear. It'll be you and me and this ridiculous view."

"And Mark. He's basically family now."

"Mark gets a stocking at Christmas."

I laugh, and he kisses me again, and his phone buzzes against my hip where his pocket presses into me. Of course it does.

He pulls back, wincing before he even looks at the screen. "That's—I have to. The fit models are at the office and Denise just texted me four times."

"Go."

"June—"

"Go, Matt. I've got it." I smooth his collar, a gesture so practiced I could do it in my sleep. "There's nothing here that can't survive without you."

Surprise flickers across his face at that, and I wish I could take the sentence back, because I didn't mean it the way it landed. Or maybe I did. I'm not sure anymore.

"I'll be home by nine," he says. "Ten at the latest. Oh—" He's already backing toward the door, keys in hand, and he points at me with a sudden burst of energy. "Dinner tomorrow. Don't forget."

"Dinner tomorrow?"

"With Tanya. I told you last week. She and Rob are in the city for a few days and she wants to see the new place, see us, the whole thing."

My hands go still on the box I'd been opening. "This soon?"

He stops at the door. "What do you mean, this soon?"

"I mean—we moved in today, Matt. The kitchen isn't even unpacked. I don't know where the wine glasses are."

"So we'll take her out. She doesn't care about the apartment, she wants to see you." He says it warmly, easily, and I hate the small mean thing in my chest that tightens anyway.

Tanya. Tanya Curtis, his best friend since they were seven years old in matching mud puddles.

Tanya, who calls him Matty. Tanya, who used to drive ninety minutes on a random Tuesday because her sink was leaking, or her car was making a noise, or she'd had a fight with Rob and needed Matty to tell her she was right.

Tanya, who cried at our wedding—genuinely, I think, I still think—and then hugged me and told me she was so glad Matt finally had someone, in a tone that made "finally" do a lot of work.

When he told me we were moving two hours away, three years ago, I opened a bottle of champagne while he was in the shower. I told him it was for the housewarming. It was not for the housewarming.

I've never said any of this. He's allowed to have friends. He's allowed to have one friend who happens to be a pretty redhead who touches his arm when she laughs and has never once, in all these years, asked me a single question about myself.

"June?" He's watching me from the doorway. "You okay?"

"Of course." I smile. I've gotten good at this smile. It's the mirror of his. "What time tomorrow?"

"Seven-thirty. She'll text you the restaurant." He hesitates, keys jingling in his hand. "It'll be fun. You two never get to spend time together anymore."

"No," I agree, pleasantly. "We don't."

He doesn't hear it. He never hears it. He blows me a kiss, tells me he loves me, and the door clicks shut behind him, and the penthouse goes quiet except for Mark and his crew shuffling boxes in the hall.

I stand there for a moment with the tape cutter dangling from my fingers. Then I get back to work.

The books go on the study shelves in order—fiction by author, the teaching texts by subject.

My old life, filed neatly. I run my thumb down the spine of a worn copy of To Kill a Mockingbird with my maiden name written inside the cover in blue pen, in handwriting I barely recognize as mine.

June Delaney. I used to stand in front of thirty fourteen-year-olds and make them care about Atticus Finch.

I used to grade essays at the kitchen table until midnight while Matt built his first store's inventory spreadsheets beside me, both of us exhausted, both of us certain.

I put the book on the shelf.

By eight, the bedroom is livable, the kitchen is functional, and the wine glasses are located—third box, marked FRAGILE in Mark's handwriting, wrapped in my own dish towels.

By nine-fifteen, I'm sitting on the ridiculously expensive couch with a glass of red, shoes off, city glittering below me, and my phone lights up.

Matt

Still at office. So sorry baby. Don't wait up. Love you.

I look at the message for a while.

June

Love you too

Then I set the phone face-down on the couch cushion.

Tomorrow night I'll put on the navy dress he likes.

I'll sit across from Tanya Curtis in some restaurant she picked, and I'll ask about Rob and their work and their new house plans, and she'll answer in monosyllables and then turn to my husband and say Matty, remember when—and I'll smile and drink my wine and be exactly the wife I'm supposed to be.

I take a long sip and look out at the skyline. Forty floors down, the whole city hums along without caring about any of it.

The wine is good. The view is better.

I don't wait up.