8. Hannah
HANNAH
I had a reason to go.
That was what I told myself as I stood in the elevator, watching the numbers climb toward the fourteenth floor.
I did not say what it was, not even to myself.
I only knew I needed to see him. Before the meetings ran late.
Before Sienna joked that she was his work wife and Pierce laughed like it was funny.
Before I became the woman who kept his house running and nothing more.
My reflection stared back at me from the elevator's polished doors. Pregnant and tired and holding a travel mug of tea I had brought from home. Like an idiot, I had even worn the blue dress he used to say he liked, back when he noticed things like that.
The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open.
The fourteenth floor was quiet. I stepped out, and my heels clicked against the tile, too loud in the stillness.
I knew the way to his office. I had been here before, back when he used to smile when I showed up unannounced, back when he would pull me into his arms and kiss me and tell his assistant to hold his calls for ten minutes.
I turned the corner, and his door was open.
That stopped me cold.
Pierce always closed his door when he worked.
Always. He said the noise from the hall broke his focus, and he needed silence to think through the numbers, to work out whatever deal he was chasing that week.
But today the door stood wide open, and I could see straight through to his desk, and Sienna was there.
She leaned against the edge of his desk, one hand braced on the polished wood, her body angled toward him like they were sharing a secret.
Her jacket hung open over a blouse cut lower than anything I owned, and her skirt rode high enough that I could see the curve of her thigh where it pressed against the desk.
She laughed at something Pierce said, a low, easy sound that carried into the hall, and then she touched his shoulder.
The air went out of me.
Pierce sat in his chair, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows the way he did when he had been working for hours.
He had his tablet in one hand, and he was scrolling through something, his mouth moving as he talked.
Numbers, probably. Projections. The kind of thing he could talk about for twenty minutes without taking a breath.
He didn't look at Sienna. He looked at the screen, his focus locked on whatever he was explaining to her.
But she looked at him.
God, the way she looked at him.
Her hand lingered on his shoulder, and then it slid down his arm, slow and deliberate, like she was testing how far she could go. Pierce didn't pull away. He didn't lean into her touch, but he didn't pull away, and that was enough to make my chest go tight.
The room felt wrong.
The lights were dimmed, not the bright overhead fluorescents Pierce usually kept on, but the soft glow of the desk lamp and the late afternoon sun slanting through the windows.
There was a bottle of wine on the side table, red, already uncorked, and two glasses next to it.
One was full. The other sat empty, waiting.
Sienna's purse was on the chair by the window, her heels kicked off beside it like she had been there for hours.
Like she had settled in. Like she belonged there.
Like I didn't.
I stepped through the doorway and stood just inside the office with my hand pressed to my stomach, the tea going cold in my other hand, and I wanted to know what I was seeing.
I wanted to cross the room and ask Pierce why the lights were low and why the wine was out in the middle of the afternoon and why Sienna had her shoes off in his office like it was her living room.
I wanted him to look up and see me and tell me I was being ridiculous, that I was worrying about nothing, that I was making a mountain out of an anthill the way he always said I did.
But I already knew what he would say.
He had said it yesterday when I told him what I overheard, that Sienna wouldn't be a work wife for long.
He had waved it off and told me I was reading into things.
He had said it when Carter warned him about her.
He had said it every single time I brought up her name. Sienna is not the enemy here, Hannah.
"So the donor event is locked for the third week of October?" Sienna's voice was smooth and confident.
"Yeah." Pierce scrolled down the tablet. "Invitations went out yesterday. We're at seventy percent confirmed, and Carter thinks we'll hit ninety by the end of the week."
"Good." She laughed again, and her fingers trailed down his forearm, stopping just short of his wrist. "You know, Pierce, I don't think you give yourself enough credit for how well these things come together. You act like it's all me, but you're the one everyone wants to see."
He shrugged, still looking at the screen. "You do the work. I just show up."
"Don't sell yourself short."
Her voice went softer on that last part, and she leaned in closer, close enough that if he turned his head they would be inches apart.
My throat went tight. My pulse kicked up, hammering against my ribs so hard I thought I might be sick.
I felt the heat crawl up my neck, flushing my face, and I knew if I stayed there one more second I would cry, or scream, or walk in and make a scene Pierce would never forgive me for.
So I didn't.
I turned and walked out and back down the hall, and I was sure someone would hear me.
Sure Sienna would glance up and see me leaving, sure she would smile that poisonous smile and know exactly what I had seen.
But I kept walking. Through the open door I saw Pierce still bent over his tablet, still talking.
I made it to the elevator, and my hands shook so badly I almost dropped the tea when I pressed the button.
The doors opened, and I stepped inside, and the whole ride down I stared at the numbers and told myself to breathe.
Just breathe.
The baby kicked, hard enough that I winced and pressed my hand to the spot. The tea sloshed in the mug, and I looked down at it. I had come here with a reason, and now I could not even hold on to it.
But he didn't even know I had been there.
I got to the lobby and walked out to the parking garage, and by the time I slid into the driver's seat I was shaking.
I set the tea in the cup holder and gripped the steering wheel with both hands, trying to steady myself.
My chest hurt. My throat hurt. My eyes stung, and I blinked hard because I was not going to cry in a parking garage like some pathetic woman who couldn't hold herself together.
I drove home on autopilot, my hands locked on the wheel, my mind stuck in that office.
I kept seeing the way Sienna stood, the way she touched him, the way the room looked. The wine. The dimmed lights. The shoes kicked off like she had been there all afternoon and planned to stay all night. I did not know what any of it meant. I only knew what it looked like.
It looked like an affair, or the edge of one.
And now I could not stop seeing it, could not stop replaying the way her hand slid down his arm, the way she leaned in close, the way she said his name like it meant something.
I pulled into the driveway and sat there, staring at the house.
The Langford home.
That was what everyone called it, like it was an institution, a landmark, something that deserved its own name. It was beautiful. It was huge, with its tall windows and its manicured lawn and its three-car garage. It had everything I could ever need, and I had never felt more alone inside it.
I got out of the car and went inside. The foyer was quiet, the afternoon light slanting through the tall windows and pooling on the marble floor.
I walked past the sitting room where I hosted his clients, past the dining room where I seated his dinners, past the office where he worked late into the night.
My feet carried me upstairs, down the hall, to the nursery.
The door was open.
I stood in the doorway and looked at the room Sienna had designed.
Pale gray walls. White furniture, clean lines, nothing soft or warm about it.
A mobile hanging over the crib with white and silver circles that spun slowly in the faint breeze from the vent.
It was tasteful. It was elegant. It was everything Pierce would have chosen if I had asked him, and nothing I wanted.
Two days ago I came home and Sienna and Pierce showed me the finished room. I said quietly, once, that it was not what I wanted. He asked what I meant. He said it was practical, and that it was already done.
I walked into the room and stood by the crib.
The mattress was already made up with sheets Sienna had picked out, white with tiny gray elephants marching in rows. There was a stuffed elephant on the shelf, bigger than the ones on the sheets, soft gray fabric with black button eyes.
It didn't matter.
None of it mattered.
My hand went to my ring, the band I had worn for six years, and I twisted it on my finger. I felt the weight of it, the cool metal against my skin, the way it had worn a faint groove into my finger from never taking it off.
I pulled the ring off.
It came off easier than I expected, sliding over my knuckle like it had been waiting for this, and I held it in my palm.
The diamond caught the light, throwing tiny rainbows across the pale gray wall, and I stared at it.
I waited to feel something. Grief, maybe.
Anger. Regret. But there was nothing. Just a hollow ache in my chest that I could not name and did not want to.
I set the ring on the shelf, next to the elephant.
It sat there, small and bright against the gray, and I looked at it for a long moment.
I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know what I was doing, or what came next, or how I was supposed to walk out of this room and go back to hosting his dinners and keeping his house and pretending everything was fine.
I just knew I couldn't wear it anymore. Not today. Not after what I saw.
I turned and walked out of the nursery.