12. Lena
LENA
The lunch rush was winding down when I noticed her at the door.
Bianca Sterling stood just inside the entrance, scanning the dining room like she owned it.
I'd been seating the Harrises at their usual table by the window, handing them menus, keeping my voice warm and steady even though exhaustion sat heavy in my chest. I hadn't slept.
Every time I closed my eyes I saw Theo's face at Maggie's door, heard myself asking him what I missed more than anything else, felt the weight of his wrong answer settling over me like a blanket I couldn't kick off.
The restaurant felt like the only solid thing left.
The dining room was half-full still, guests finishing their meals, the low hum of conversation mixing with the soft clink of silverware on plates.
I knew every table, every face, the rhythm of service like breathing.
This place had been mine long before Theo was, and it was still here when everything else had fallen apart.
I walked back toward the host stand, my hand going to my ring finger out of habit.
The bare skin felt wrong, too light, like I'd lost something I couldn't quite remember how to live without.
I'd catch myself doing it and force my hand back down to my side, then do it again ten minutes later like an idiot.
Bianca saw me and smiled.
I didn't smile back. I kept my face neutral and waited for her to speak first, the way I'd wait for any guest who walked in without a reservation. My pulse kicked up a notch. She had no business being here. This was my family's restaurant, my world, not hers. Not Theo's.
"Lena." She crossed the dining room in that easy way she had, like every space was hers to move through, like she belonged everywhere she chose to stand. Her coat was open over something dark, her hair pulled back low. "I hope I'm not interrupting. Do you have a minute?"
"I'm working," I said.
"Of course you are." She glanced around the dining room, at the tables still occupied, the servers moving between them with trays balanced on their palms and water pitchers in hand.
Her gaze swept over it all like she was cataloging it, filing it away.
"This is such a lovely place. So cozy. Theo's told me about it, you know.
He talks about this restaurant all the time, but I'd never actually been here before today. "
There it was. That edge under the pleasantries, the one that made every word feel like she was patting me on the head. Like she was humoring me. Like what I did here was sweet but small, nothing compared to Theo's empire and his name on a television show and restaurants across three continents.
My jaw tightened. "Why are you here, Bianca?"
"I needed to talk to you." She folded her hands in front of her, and for a second something shifted in her expression, a flicker of something I couldn't name before it smoothed itself away.
"Somewhere private, if that's all right.
This isn't really a conversation I want to have in front of your customers. "
I stared at her. She waited, patient and still, like she had all the time in the world. Like she knew I'd say yes.
"Fine." I turned and led her toward the back, past the kitchen doors where I could hear Maggie calling out orders, past the office to the small storage room we used for overflow supplies.
It was barely big enough for two people to stand in, boxes of napkins and table linens stacked against the walls.
I shut the door and stayed standing. "What do you want? "
Bianca didn't sit. She stood there with her hands still folded, looking at me with an expression I couldn't quite read. Concerned, maybe. Or sympathetic. Something that made my skin crawl.
"I'm sorry to come here like this," she said. Her voice was soft, carefully modulated. "I know things have been difficult between you and Theo, and I didn't want to make it worse. But I couldn't keep this to myself anymore. You deserve the truth."
"The truth about what?"
She took a breath, hesitating just long enough to look like it hurt. "Theo and I have been seeing each other. For a while now. I didn't want you to find out this way, Lena. I really didn't. But I thought it was better if it came from me than from someone else. You deserve to hear it from me."
The words landed, sharp and precise, like she'd known exactly how to say them. Like she'd practiced.
I felt my throat go tight. My pulse kicked up hard and fast, blood roaring in my ears, and I gripped the edge of a shelf to steady myself. The room felt too small, too hot, the air thick and suffocating. "You're lying."
"I wish I were."
"No." I shook my head, and the motion felt strange, disconnected, like my body wasn't quite mine anymore. "You're lying. Theo wouldn't do that."
"Lena." She said my name like she was talking to a child, gentle and patient. "I know this is hard to hear. I know it's not what you want to believe. But it's the truth. I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here because you deserve to know what's been happening."
My hands curled into fists at my sides. My fingernails dug into my palms hard enough to sting. "Why would I believe anything you say?"
"Because I'm telling you the truth." She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping even lower.
"I didn't plan for this, Lena. Neither of us did.
These things just happen sometimes. You can't always control who you fall for, or when it happens.
I know you and Theo have been having problems for a long time.
He told me. He told me how unhappy you've been, how distant things have gotten between you.
And I—" She stopped, pressing her lips together like she was holding something back. "I'm not proud of it. But it happened."
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shove her out of this room, out of the restaurant, out of my life. But my voice came out cold instead, sharp and flat and hard. "Prove it."
She blinked. "What?"
"Prove it. If you've been seeing my husband, prove it. Give me one reason I should believe anything you're saying."
For a moment she didn't answer. She just looked at me, her expression unreadable. Then she nodded slowly, like she'd expected this. Like she'd been ready for it.
"All right," she said. "There's a shirt of his at my apartment.
A dark green henley. It has a worn collar, and there's a small pulled thread near the left shoulder seam.
Just a little one, barely noticeable unless you're looking for it.
The fabric's gone soft from being washed so many times, the way old clothes do when you've had them forever. "
The air went out of my lungs.
She kept going, her voice steady and certain. "The green's faded at the shoulders. Not everywhere, just at the top, the way it does when it sits in front of a window and the sun hits it day after day. And the brand tag inside the collar is rubbed almost blank. You can barely read it anymore."
I knew that shirt.
God, I knew that shirt.
I'd washed it a hundred times, always by hand or on delicate because the fabric was too soft for a regular cycle.
I'd hung it to dry because the dryer shrank it and Theo loved the way it fit.
I'd run my fingers over that pulled thread more times than I could count, meaning to fix it and never getting around to it.
I'd seen it fade over the years, the green going lighter at the shoulders where the sun used to hit it when he stood at the stove in our old apartment making breakfast on Sunday mornings.
How did she know?
How could she possibly know those details—the pulled thread, the faded shoulders, the worn-out tag—unless she'd seen it, touched it, held it in her hands?
My legs felt like they were going to give out. My chest was so tight I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything except stand there and try to make sense of what she was telling me.
"It's at my place," Bianca said, still talking in that same gentle, unrushed way. "He left it there the last time he came over. I thought about giving it back to him, but—well. I'm sure you can imagine why I kept it."
"You're lying," I said. My voice sounded far away, like it belonged to someone else. "You have to be lying."
"I'm not." She took a step closer, and I could smell her perfume now, something sharp and floral and expensive.
Jasmine layered over bitter orange peel, cold and invasive.
"I know this is a lot to take in, Lena. I didn't want to hurt you.
I wish there was a way to tell you that wouldn't hurt.
But you asked for proof, and I'm giving it to you.
You deserve to know the truth. You deserve someone who shows up for you. Someone who puts you first."
She paused, and something flickered across her face again, too quick for me to catch. Then it was gone, and she was looking at me with that same careful sympathy.
"Theo doesn't know I'm here," she said. "He'd be furious if he knew I told you. But I couldn't keep lying to you, Lena. It didn't feel right."
I stared at her. My hands were shaking. My whole body felt like it was shaking, trembling apart from the inside out. I couldn't get enough air. Couldn't think past the roaring in my ears and the sick, twisting feeling in my stomach.
"Get out," I said.
Bianca didn't move. "Lena?—"
"I said get out." My voice cracked, sharp and raw, and I pointed at the door. "Get out of my restaurant. Now."
She hesitated, and for just a second I saw something flicker across her face.
Not regret. Not sympathy. Something else, something that sat wrong in the space between us, almost like satisfaction.
There and gone before I could be sure. Then she was nodding, her expression settling back into kindness like a door closing.
"All right," she said quietly. "If that's what you want."
"It is."
"I'm sorry, Lena. I really am. I didn't come here to hurt you.
I just thought you deserved to know." She walked past me, her movements slow and deliberate, and opened the door.
She paused in the doorway, glancing back over her shoulder.
"I hope you find someone who treats you the way you deserve to be treated.
You're a good person. You deserve better than this. "
Then she was gone.
I stood there in the tiny storage room, my hands gripping the shelf so hard my knuckles went white.
The scent of her perfume hung in the air, that sharp jasmine and bitter orange layered over something cold underneath.
It clung to the walls, to my clothes, to my skin.
It stayed even after she was gone, invasive and impossible to ignore, like she'd marked the space just by being in it.
I couldn't stay here.
I couldn't stand in this room and let my staff see me like this, shaking and pale and about to fall apart. I couldn't walk back out into the dining room and smile at guests and pretend nothing had happened. I couldn't do any of it.
I walked out of the storage room, past the kitchen where Maggie was at the pass plating something and calling out to one of the line cooks.
She looked up when I passed, her mouth opening like she was about to say something, but I didn't stop.
I grabbed my coat and my bag from the office and kept walking, out the back door and into the cold afternoon air.
The cold hit my face like a slap. I sucked in a breath, then another, my lungs burning. My hands were still shaking when I dug my keys out of my bag and unlocked the car.
I got in. Gripped the wheel. Stared at the dashboard.
The shirt. She'd described it perfectly. Every single detail. The pulled thread near the shoulder seam that I'd noticed months ago and never bothered to fix. The worn collar from twelve years of washing. The faded green at the shoulders where the sun used to hit it.
Things a stranger wouldn't know.
Things I'd barely thought about myself until she said them out loud.
How did she know?
My chest hurt. My throat hurt. Everything hurt.
I started the engine and pulled out into traffic, heading for the house. I didn't know what I was going to find there. I didn't know what I wanted to find. But I had to go. I had to see for myself. Had to know if there was anything else she could describe, anything else she shouldn't know.
The roads blurred past, familiar streets I'd driven a thousand times.
My mind kept circling back to the shirt, to Bianca's voice when she described it, to the way she'd looked at me like I was something to be pitied.
To the way she'd said Theo would be furious if he knew she told me, like she was doing me some kind of favor. Like she cared.
I wanted her to be lying.
God, I wanted her to be lying.
I wanted to get to the house and throw open the wardrobe and find that shirt exactly where it was supposed to be, hanging in its usual spot, proof that she'd made it all up. That she was guessing. That she'd somehow gotten lucky with the details.
But I couldn't stop thinking about the way she'd described it. Every single thing exactly right. The pulled thread. The worn collar. The faded shoulders. The tag rubbed almost blank.
Things a stranger wouldn't know.
Unless she wasn't a stranger to that shirt. Unless she'd seen it. Touched it. Had it in her hands.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel, my knuckles white. The sick feeling in my stomach twisted tighter, harder, until I thought I might have to pull over.
I didn't know what to believe anymore.
I didn't know anything.