12. Liana
— ? —
Liana
The last car rolled down the drive and the taillights disappeared into the dark.
Caterers moved across the lawn behind me, folding tables, stacking chairs, clearing the wreckage of the perfect party I had built. I stood in the foyer with my heels in one hand and my phone in the other, watching the screen light up again and again.
I had been ignoring it for the past hour. Smiling at guests, accepting their careful goodbyes, pretending I didn’t see the pity in their eyes or the way they glanced toward the stairs before they left.
But the guests were gone now and there was no one left to perform for, so I looked.
Posy Wetherell had already posted it.
The Crow’s Nest, Newport’s favorite gossip column, now with instant social media updates for moments too delicious to wait for print.
Posy had been at the party tonight.
The photo showed Dominic in the center of the frame, Angela cradled against his chest.
The caption read: “Trouble in paradise? Dominic Costa sweeps mystery blonde off her feet at the Regatta Gala while wife Liana plays hostess. More to come…”
The comments were already in the hundreds.
I scrolled without meaning to, my thumb moving on its own, pulling the poison up the screen.
“Who’s the blonde? She’s gorgeous.”
“The wife is RIGHT THERE. This is brutal.”
“I feel so bad for her, she looks like she has no idea.”
“She definitely knows. Look at her face. That smile is not real.”
“Dominic Costa is FINE but this is messy.”
“The blonde works for him apparently. Office romance vibes.”
“Poor Liana. She planned this whole party and he’s carrying another woman over the threshold.”
“The threshold comment is SAVAGE and accurate.”
“Newport men are trash, exhibit 47.”
“My cousin was there, she said the wife just kept smiling and talking about the harbor commission like nothing happened. Ice cold or in shock?”
“Definitely in shock. Nobody is that calm when their husband does this.”
My thumb stopped moving. I stared at the screen, at the photo of my husband holding another woman, at the tiny blurred version of myself in the corner looking like a fool.
I heard footsteps and looked up.
Dominic was coming down. He looked tired, rumpled, like he had been sitting with her for the past hour instead of coming back to the party. Instead of coming back to me.
He stopped on the bottom step when he saw my face.
“Liana, I was just about to come find you and explain what happened up there.” He ran a hand through his hair and let out a breath. “Angela’s fine, the doctor checked her out and said it was dehydration and exhaustion, she’s resting now and-”
“You’re trending.” I turned the phone screen to face him. “Congratulations, Posy Wetherell thinks you’re the scandal of the season.”
He looked at the screen and his jaw went tight. His eyes moved over the photo, the caption, the comments scrolling past too fast to read.
“This is exactly the kind of thing Posy lives for, she twists everything to get clicks.” He stepped down off the last stair and moved toward me. “I’ll call her in the morning and get her to take it down before-”
“Before what?” I pulled the phone back and stared at him. “Before everyone on this coast sees the photo of you carrying another woman into our house while I stand there smiling like an idiot?”
“You know that’s not what happened tonight, I was just trying to help her.” He reached for my arm but I stepped back. “She collapsed, I reacted, I wasn’t thinking about how it would look.”
“You’ve got a doctor at the gate who gets paid very well to handle exactly this kind of situation.” I kept my voice level even though my hands wanted to shake. “You’ve got a dozen men on staff who could have carried her inside without causing a scene.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the staff, I was thinking about getting her off the ground and somewhere safe.” He spread his hands wide. “It was instinct, Liana, it didn’t mean anything.”
“The doctor was finished with her in ten minutes. You stayed up there an hour.” I held his gaze. “Was that instinct too? Look at me when you answer.”
His eyes dropped to the floor.
“That’s what I thought.” I set my heels down on the marble with a click that echoed through the empty foyer. “You can’t even lie to my face about her.”
“I’m not lying, she’s a friend and a colleague and nothing more than that.” He looked up finally but his eyes slid past mine, landing somewhere over my shoulder. “I would never do that to you.”
“You did do that to me.” I stepped closer to him and watched him flinch. “You did it tonight in front of everyone I know, everyone I have to see at the club and the galas and the school pickup line for the rest of my life.”
“Liana-”
“You picked her up with your own hands and carried her like a fucking bride across our lawn and through our doors while I stood there making small talk.”
“That’s not the same thing and you know it.” He took a step toward me and I took a step back. “I was helping someone who was hurt, I wasn’t making some kind of romantic gesture.”
“She’s a grown woman with her own home and her own life, she doesn’t need you sitting at her bedside. You chose her.”
“I’m sorry, Liana. I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking about how it would look or how it would make you feel.”
“It’s about the fact that your first instinct when she fell was to run to her and scoop her up like she was the most important person in your world.”
“She’s not the most important person in my world, you are.” He grabbed my wrists and held them, not hard, just firm enough that I couldn’t pull away. “You and Bianca are everything to me, you know that.”
“I don’t want your explanations.” I cut him off and watched his mouth snap shut. “I want to know why you married me if you were going to end up treating me like this.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I gave you ten years of my life, Dominic. I walked into your house when I was nothing but payment. I should have stayed away from you.”
“Liana, that’s all-”
“But I fell in love with you instead. I let you be my first everything. I married you and had your daughter and built this life with you from nothing, and I thought we were partners, I thought we were a team.”
“We are a team, nothing about that has changed.” He reached for me again and I slapped his hands away.
“Everything has changed.”
“Nothing matters more to me than my family.”
I couldn’t hear his excuses anymore.
I turned and walked toward the stairs.
There was nothing Dominic could say that would change my mind about how I felt.