The Billionaire's Broken Marriage

1. Carly

CARLY

The crowd roared when Boone took the stage.

I stood near the back of the venue, my hands gripping the VIP pass that hung around my neck.

The lights dropped and the whole place went dark.

Then a single spotlight hit him, and he lifted his guitar like he'd been born holding it.

The crowd went wild. People screamed his name, held up their phones, pressed forward against the barrier.

I'd seen this a hundred times over ten years of marriage, and it still felt like watching a stranger.

He started with the upbeat number from his last album, the one we wrote together at the kitchen table after he got back from his father's office looking like someone had punched him. My words, his melody. Nobody knew. They never knew.

The set moved through the old songs, the ones everyone recognized. Boone worked the stage like he owned it, grinning at the crowd, tossing picks to the front row. His voice filled the venue, rough and warm at the same time. I'd always loved his voice. That part was still true.

Then he paused, slinging his guitar strap higher on his shoulder.

He leaned into the microphone. "Y'all have been incredible tonight," he said.

The crowd screamed again. "This is the last show of the tour, and I want to thank every single one of you for coming out.

" More screams. He waited for the noise to die down, then smiled in that way that made women in the audience lose their minds.

"I've got something new for you. Haven't played this one live yet. "

My stomach tightened.

He started playing, and I didn't recognize the opening chords.

That was wrong. I knew all his songs. I worked on all his songs.

We sat together in the studio, in the living room, at the piano in the corner of the house while the sun came up, and I fixed his rhythms and rewrote his lines until they sounded right.

This one was different. This one was new.

The melody was simple and pretty, the kind of thing that would get stuck in your head for days.

His voice dropped low on the first verse, intimate and careful, like he was telling a secret.

The lyrics were about a girl with dark hair who laughed at his jokes, who knew him before he was anybody, who made him feel like he could be more than his father's legacy.

The details piled up. Specific details. Real details.

None of them were about me.

My chest went tight, and I forced myself to keep breathing. I told myself it didn't matter. He was allowed to write songs on his own. We'd been married for ten years, and maybe he didn't need me for every single one anymore. That should have been fine. It should have felt like progress.

It didn't.

The song sounded heartfelt in a way that made my throat ache.

He sang about late nights and stolen moments and a girl who understood him when nobody else did.

The crowd was silent, hanging on every word, and I realized they loved it.

They loved this song that I'd never heard, that I hadn't worked on, that wasn't about me at all.

God, I felt like an idiot standing there with my VIP pass and my forced smile while my husband sang to twenty thousand people about someone else.

He finished the song and the venue exploded.

People were on their feet, screaming, crying, holding their phones up to capture the moment.

Boone grinned and ducked his head like he was embarrassed, which he wasn't. He thanked them again, played two more songs from the old catalog, and then the lights came up. The last show of the tour was over.

I waited near the stage door while Boone signed autographs.

This was normal. Expected. He always stayed after the shows to meet fans, to shake hands and take pictures and make people feel like they mattered to him.

I stood off to the side with my arms crossed, watching him laugh with a girl who couldn't have been older than twenty.

She was crying and telling him how much his music meant to her, and he put his hand on her shoulder and said something that made her cry harder.

He was good at this part.

"Carly."

I turned. Tuck, his tour manager, nodded at me and handed me a bottle of water I didn't ask for. "Long night," he said.

"Yeah." I unscrewed the cap and took a sip, even though I wasn't thirsty.

Tuck glanced at Boone, then back at me. "You doing okay?"

I hated that question. "Fine," I said. "Just ready to get home."

He didn't look like he believed me, but he didn't push. Tuck had been with Boone since the beginning, and he'd seen enough over the years to know when to keep his mouth shut. He clapped me on the shoulder and moved off to deal with the security team.

The crowd around Boone thinned out slowly. People took their pictures, got their autographs, wandered off clutching signed posters like they'd been given something sacred. I checked my phone. No messages. I put it back in my pocket and kept waiting.

Then I saw her.

She was tall and polished in a way that looked effortless, with blonde hair that fell in perfect waves and a dress that probably cost more than my car. She walked up to Boone like she had every right to be there, and he looked up from the kid he was signing for and his whole face changed.

"Savannah," he said, and he smiled.

Not the smile he gave the fans. Not the smile he gave me when I reminded him about dinner with his parents. A real smile, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look ten years younger.

She laughed, bright and easy, and leaned in to hug him. He hugged her back. I stood there with my arms still crossed, watching them like I was watching a scene in a movie I didn't understand.

"I can't believe you're here," Boone said. He still had his hands on her shoulders, like he needed to make sure she was real. "I didn't know you were coming."

"I wouldn't miss your last show, Boone." Her voice was warm and sweet, the kind of voice that made you want to trust her. "You were incredible tonight. That new song?" She pressed her hand to her chest, right over her heart. "It was beautiful. Really beautiful."

My jaw tightened.

Boone's grin got wider. "You think so? I wasn't sure about it. Felt risky, playing something nobody's heard before."

"It was perfect," Savannah said. She tilted her head, and her hair caught the light. "It felt so personal, you know? Like you were really letting people in. That's what they want from you."

They kept talking, and I kept standing there. Boone didn't look at me. Didn't introduce me. Didn't acknowledge that I was three feet away from him, listening to this stranger tell my husband how incredible he was.

Savannah finally turned, like she'd just noticed me. "Oh," she said. Her smile didn't waver. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ignore you. I'm Savannah Merritt." She held out her hand, and I shook it because what else was I supposed to do.

"Carly," I said.

"Carly, of course." She tilted her head again, studying me. "Boone's told me so much about you."

That was a lie. I knew it was a lie. Boone didn't talk about me. Not to the press, not to his family, not to people like her who showed up at concerts in expensive dresses and hugged him like they had history.

"It's so nice to finally meet you," Savannah continued. Her voice was still warm, still sweet, but something underneath it felt sharp. "You must be so proud of him. All of this." She gestured at the venue, the stage, the lingering fans. "It's incredible, isn't it? Everything he's built."

Everything he'd built. Not we'd built. Not together. Just him.

I forced a smile. "Yeah," I said. "It's incredible."

Boone jumped in, oblivious. "Savannah and I go way back," he said. He was still grinning, still lit up in a way I hadn't seen in months. "She's been in L.A. for years. I had no idea she was even in Nashville."

"I just got back," Savannah said. She looked at Boone, not me. "Daddy wanted me home for a while, so here I am. And I figured, why not surprise you?" She laughed, and Boone laughed with her, and I stood there feeling like I was watching the two of them through glass.

They talked about people I didn't know, places I'd never been.

Inside jokes that went over my head. Savannah mentioned some party they'd both been to years ago, and Boone threw his head back and laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd heard all week.

She touched his arm when she talked, light and casual, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to grab Boone's hand and drag him out of there and ask him why the hell he was acting like this woman was the most interesting person he'd ever met. But I didn't. I stood there with my hands in my pockets and my smile frozen on my face, and I didn't say a word.

Savannah turned to me again. "You know, Carly, you're lucky to have him," she said.

Her tone was so sincere, so kind, that anyone listening would have thought she meant it.

"He's always been so driven. So talented.

I remember when we were younger, I used to tell him he was going to be a star, and look at him now.

" She smiled at Boone, then back at me. "It must be nice, getting to go along for the ride. "

My stomach dropped. Getting to go along for the ride.

Like I was a passenger. Like I hadn't spent ten years writing his songs and fixing his melodies and running his house while he toured the country.

Like I hadn't given up everything to be his partner, only for nobody to know I was his partner at all.

"Yeah," I said. My voice came out flat. "Real nice."

Boone didn't notice. He was already talking again, asking Savannah about her father, about the label, about whether she was planning to stick around Nashville for a while. She said she wasn't sure, but she hoped so. She missed it here. She missed the music scene. She missed him.

She didn't say that last part out loud, but I heard it anyway.

Eventually Savannah said she had to go, and she hugged Boone again. She smiled at me, told me how lovely it was to meet me, and walked off like she owned the whole damn venue. Boone watched her leave, still smiling.

"We should head out," I said.

He blinked, like he'd forgotten I was there. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, let's go."

The drive home was quiet. Boone slid into the passenger seat and pulled out his phone before I even started the car. I turned the key, adjusted the mirrors, and pulled out of the lot while he scrolled through whatever was on his screen. The glow from the phone lit up his face in the dark.

I kept my eyes on the road. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter than they needed to, and I told myself to let it go. To not ask. To just drive home and go to bed and pretend like tonight had been fine.

I lasted about five minutes.

"Who was she?" I asked.

Boone didn't look up. His thumb kept moving across the screen. "Who?"

"The woman at the venue. Savannah."

"Oh." He tapped something, still distracted. "Just someone I knew a long time ago."

That was it. That was all I got. Just someone I knew a long time ago, like she was a acquaintance he'd run into at the grocery store, not someone who'd made him light up like a damn Christmas tree.

I wanted to ask about the song. I wanted to ask why he hadn't told me he was working on new material, why he'd played it for twenty thousand strangers before he played it for me.

I wanted to ask if the girl in the song was Savannah, if that's why he'd looked so happy to see her, if that's why he'd stood there laughing at her jokes while I disappeared into the background like I always did.

I didn't ask any of it.

Instead I drove, and Boone kept scrolling through his phone, and the silence between us felt heavier than it ever had before.

By the time we pulled into the driveway, my chest was tight and my throat ached and I felt so stupid for caring this much.

He didn't even notice. He got out of the car, still looking at his phone, and headed inside without waiting for me.

I sat there for a minute, staring at the dashboard.

I felt less sure of myself than I had in years.