CHAPTER. SIX

OSCAR

I found out the way husbands always find out too late, and from the wrong person. Mia came to my office on a Wednesday morning with red eyes and a guilty conscience she had apparently been carrying so long she was ready to set it down anywhere.

She sat across from me and told me everything. Eden Blackwood and Evelyn. Seven years ago. A message she had buried. A relationship she had convinced my wife was already dead before it had finished living.

I listened without interrupting. I was good at that. Being still, being patient, waiting for the whole shape of a thing before I reacted. It had always served me well in business.

It felt entirely useless right now.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, when she finished.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Because he's not going to stop. And because Eve deserves better than to be caught between two things she didn't choose." She looked at me steadily. "And because you deserve to know what you're dealing with."

After she left, I sat for a long time.

My assistant knocked. "Sir? Your ten o'clock .."

"Cancel it," I said.

She closed the door without arguing.

I looked at the report on my desk, the one I had requested three days ago, the one that told me everything publicly known about Eden Blackwood. Youngest Prada CEO in history. Unmarried. No known relationships. Past long-term involvement: Evelyn Williams.

My wife's maiden name. I had read that line four times when the report arrived. I had set it aside, told myself it was history, told myself it didn't matter. She had chosen me. She had said yes. She had put on the dress.

I had believed that because I wanted to believe it. That was the thing about love, it had a very convenient blind spot.

* * *

Evelyn came home late that night. I was in the living room, lights low, not reading the book that was open in my lap. I heard her key in the lock, heard the careful way she opened the door, the way you open a door when you're hoping the person inside is already asleep.

"Dinner's still warm," I said.

She startled. "I already ate. I was with…"

"Mia," I said. "I know."

She looked at me carefully. I saw her deciding how much I knew. I let the silence do its work.

"Oscar." She sat down on the other end of the couch. "Whatever you're thinking.."

"I'm not thinking about anything yet," I said. "I'm asking." I looked at her. "Who is Eden Blackwood to you?"

Every drop of color left her face. She was still for so long I could hear the clock on the wall.

"He was my past," she said finally. "It was a long time ago."

"And now?" I asked.

She didn't answer. That was the answer. I stood up. Walked to the window. The city was all lit up below us, moving and indifferent, full of people who did not have to sit in a room and acknowledge that the person they loved had left part of themselves somewhere else.

"I married you," I said, "because I love you. Not because I was convenient. Not because I was safe. Because I looked at you and thought, that's the person I want to do this with." I turned around. "But I cannot compete with someone who lives in the part of your heart I've never been allowed into."

Her eyes were full. "Oscar, I don't want to hurt you."

"I know that," I said quietly. "But you are."

She pressed her hand over her mouth.

I didn't cross the room.

I didn't hold her. Sometimes love means standing still enough to let a person feel the full weight of the truth.

"I need to know one thing," I said. "And I need you to be honest with me. Not for my pride. Not for the marriage. For you." I looked at her steadily. "Do you still love him?"

The silence that followed was the longest of my life. She opened her mouth.

My phone rang..I glanced at the screen out of habit.

Unknown number.. I pressed decline. But in the second I had looked away, in that single, stolen second, Evelyn's expression had changed.

She had decided something. I just didn't yet know which way she had fallen. And for the first time since the day I asked her to marry me, I was

genuinely terrified of the answer.