28. Hannah
HANNAH
I heard his car pull up before I saw him through the window. My stomach twisted into a knot so tight it hurt. God, what was I even doing?
Julia had left for the school an hour ago, and I'd spent every minute since then pacing her living room and second-guessing myself.
The nursery. The appointment. The way Pierce had stayed the whole time and asked the doctor questions like he actually cared about the answers.
He'd written down the due date in his phone.
He'd asked about the next appointment before I could.
Maybe I was being an idiot, getting my hopes up. Maybe he'd fall back into the same pattern the second I asked him something hard.
Or maybe he wouldn't.
I wiped my palms on my maternity jeans and walked to the door.
My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.
This is a test, and he doesn't know it. I needed to see if he'd tell me the truth without me having to drag it out of him.
I needed to know if he'd own his part or if he'd hide behind excuses the way he always had.
I opened the door before he knocked.
Pierce looked exhausted. His tie was loosened, his collar unbuttoned, and there were shadows under his eyes I hadn't noticed at the appointment. He stood on Julia's front step like he wasn't sure if he was allowed to be there, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders tight with tension.
"Hannah," he said. Just my name, nothing else.
"Come in," I said, stepping back.
He followed me inside and shut the door quietly behind him, like he was afraid of disturbing something.
The house felt smaller with him in it, the ceilings lower, the walls closer together.
Julia's living room was nothing like the Langford house—her couch was secondhand, the coffee table scratched and ringed with water marks, the rug showing its age—and I wondered if Pierce noticed the difference.
Probably not. He was looking at me, not the furniture.
I sat down on the couch because standing felt like too much effort.
My back had been aching since I woke up, and the baby had been kicking all morning like it was training for something.
Pierce stayed on his feet for a moment, then seemed to think better of it and lowered himself into the armchair across from me.
He kept his distance. Careful. Deliberate.
"Thank you for letting me come," he said.
I nodded, folding my hands over my stomach because I didn't know what else to do with them. My throat felt tight, and I hadn't even asked the question yet. Don't lose your nerve now.
"I need to ask you something," I said, forcing myself to look at him. "About the office."
His whole body went still. His jaw tightened, and I saw his hands grip the arms of the chair. But he didn't look away.
I kept going before I could talk myself out of it. "The day I came to your office. When I walked in and saw you with Sienna." My voice came out steadier than I felt, but my pulse was hammering in my chest, in my ears, everywhere. "I need to know what really happened, Pierce."
He didn't answer right away. He rubbed a hand over his face, fingers pressing into his eyes like he could push back whatever he was feeling, then let it drop. When he looked at me again, there was something raw in his expression that I wasn't prepared for.
"Carter found the security footage," he said.
I blinked. "What?"
"From the office. The cameras." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and I could see the exhaustion in every line of him. Not just tired. Worn down. "Sienna staged it, Hannah. She knew you were coming. She set the whole thing up so you'd walk in and see exactly what you saw."
The air went out of me all at once, like someone had punched me in the chest. I stared at him, trying to make the words make sense, but they just sat there in my brain refusing to connect. "She—what?"
"The footage shows her setting up my office with the wine and her shoes off," Pierce said.
His voice was flat, like he was reporting facts he'd memorized and recited a hundred times already.
"Then she stood close to me and waited, watching the door, until you walked in.
She timed the whole thing, Hannah. Down to the minute. "
Oh, God. My hands started shaking. I pressed them harder against my stomach, trying to steady myself, but my whole body felt like it was vibrating from the inside out. "You're saying she planned it. She knew I was coming and she?—"
"Yes."
The word hung between us, solid and undeniable.
I wanted to feel relieved. I wanted to feel vindicated, like I'd been right all along and now I finally had proof. Instead, I just felt sick. My stomach churned, and I thought I might actually throw up right there on Julia's rug.
Pierce didn't move. He was watching me, waiting for me to say something, and I could see he was braced for whatever came next. Like he expected me to yell at him or throw him out or tell him it didn't matter.
"So that's it, then," I said. My voice sounded strange, distant, like it was coming from somewhere outside my own body. "It was all Sienna. You didn't do anything wrong."
"No." The word came out sharp, almost harsh, and I flinched. Pierce saw it and his expression shifted immediately, softening. "No, Hannah. That's not what I'm saying."
I stared at him, confused.
"Sienna set up that scene," he said, and his voice was quieter now but no less intense. "But everything else—every time I made you feel like you didn't matter, every time I waved you off or told you that you were overreacting—that was me. That was all me."
My chest felt too tight, like there wasn't enough air in the room. I couldn't look away from him.
"You told me Sienna was hostile to you," Pierce said, and there was something in his voice I'd never heard before.
Something that sounded like shame. "You told me over and over again, and I acted like you were making a mountain out of an anthill.
I said that to you, Hannah. Those exact words.
Like your feelings were something small and ridiculous that I could just brush away. "
He had. More than once. I remembered the sting of it every time, the way it made me feel small and silly and like I couldn't trust my own judgment about anything.
"I answered your feelings with logic," Pierce continued.
His hands were clenched into fists on his knees now, knuckles white.
"Like you were a problem I could solve with the right argument instead of my wife trying to tell me something was wrong.
I told you, 'We'll get it done, Hannah. We have time.
' I told you, 'Just send me the link for the crib and I'll look at it tomorrow.
' I didn't listen, Hannah. I didn't see what was right in front of me because I didn't want to be inconvenienced by it. "
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My throat had gone so tight I could barely breathe, and there was pressure building behind my eyes that I knew meant tears were coming whether I wanted them to or not.
Pierce wasn't finished. "You needed me to be there when the baby was coming, and I made you feel like you were asking for too much.
You wanted me at the appointments, and I treated every single one like it was an interruption to my schedule.
The nursery—" His voice cracked, and he stopped.
Took a breath. "God, the nursery. You wanted it planned your way, and I handed the whole thing off to Sienna because it was easier than actually listening to what you wanted. "
I couldn't stop the tears now. They were sliding down my face, hot and fast, and I wiped at them with the back of my hand, frustrated with myself. I didn't want to cry in front of him. I didn't want him to think this changed anything, that a confession erased six years of being ignored.
"I loved you," Pierce said, and his voice was so quiet I almost didn't hear it.
"I still love you. But I thought that was enough.
I thought as long as I kept working and kept the money coming in and kept everything running, the marriage would take care of itself.
I didn't see that I was losing you until you were already gone. "
My hands wouldn't stay still. I pressed them to my face, trying to breathe through the tightness in my chest, trying to get myself under control.
This wasn't what I'd expected. I'd been braced for excuses, for him to use the footage as proof that he'd never done anything wrong, that it was all Sienna's fault and he was blameless.
But he wasn't doing that.
"I'm not telling you this to defend myself," Pierce said.
"I'm telling you because you asked, and because you deserve the truth.
Sienna staged that scene, but I gave her every reason in the world to think it would work.
I made you feel invisible, Hannah. I made you feel like you didn't matter. That's on me. Not her."
I lowered my hands slowly and looked at him through blurry eyes. He was still sitting forward, elbows on his knees, watching me steadily. There was no expectation in it. No demand. No silent plea for me to say it was okay or that I forgave him. He was just... there. Waiting.
The worst thing I'd believed—the thing that had haunted me every single day since I walked out of his office—it was a lie. She'd set it up. She'd orchestrated the whole thing, timed it, planned it, made sure I'd see exactly what she wanted me to see.
And he'd just handed me the proof like it didn't matter, like it didn't absolve him of anything.
Maybe it didn't.
"Do you still have it?" I asked. My voice came out rough, scraped raw. "The ring."
Pierce went very still. For a long moment I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he nodded, once, barely perceptible.
I didn't ask to see it. I didn't ask why he'd kept it or what he thought it meant or if he was holding onto some fantasy that I'd ask for it back someday. I just nodded and wiped my face again, smearing tears across my cheeks.
"The divorce is still going ahead," I said.
"I know."
"I'm not—" I stopped. Swallowed hard. Tried again. "I'm not saying I forgive you, Pierce. I'm not saying any of this changes what I decided."
"I know," he said again. His voice was so quiet, so steady, like he'd already accepted it before he walked through the door.
I wanted to be angry at him. I wanted to hold onto the hurt and the betrayal and the months of feeling like I didn't matter, like I was just a piece of furniture in his house that he walked past every day without really seeing.
But sitting there in Julia's living room, looking at the man I'd married six years ago, all I felt was exhausted.
"Okay," I said.
Pierce didn't move. "Okay?"
"You can stay for a while," I said. My voice was barely above a whisper. "If you want to."
He looked at me like I'd just handed him something fragile and breakable, something he didn't trust himself to hold without shattering it into a thousand pieces. Then he nodded and settled back into the chair, and we sat there together in the quiet.
Outside, I heard a car drive past. The sound of it faded into the distance, and then there was just the silence of Julia's house around us. The baby kicked, hard enough that I gasped a little, and I shifted on the couch, trying to find a position that didn't make my back scream in protest.
Pierce's gaze dropped to my stomach, then back to my face. "Does it hurt?" he asked. "The kicking."
"Sometimes," I said. "Mostly it just feels weird. Like there's something alive inside me." I almost laughed at how stupid that sounded. "I mean, obviously there is, but—you know what I mean."
He almost smiled. It didn't quite make it all the way across his face, but I saw the ghost of it at the corner of his mouth, softening the hard lines that had been carved there by exhaustion and stress.
Julia's house settled around us with small sounds.
The heater kicked on with its familiar rattle, and I heard the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen, steady and constant.
Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds. The kind of sounds that filled a life when there wasn't anything dramatic happening, when you were just two people sitting in a room trying to figure out what came next.
Pierce didn't ask me what I was thinking.
He didn't try to fill the silence with promises or apologies or more explanations about how he was going to be different now, how he'd learned his lesson.
He just sat there, and I sat there, and the minutes stretched out between us like something we were both learning to hold without breaking it.
I didn't know if this meant anything. I didn't know if it changed the trajectory we were on or if the divorce would still go through exactly the way I'd planned. But the worst thing I'd believed—the thing that had kept me up at night, that had made me feel like I'd never been enough—it was a lie.
And that had to count for something.