All Chapters of The Last Time He Got It Wrong: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

9 Chapters

Chapter 1

Five years ago, Damian Keats ignored every objection and proposed to me, swearing he would spend the rest of his life treating me like royalty.But once we were married, every "mistake" he made somehow landed in Sienna Lowe's favor."Elena, don't be dramatic. I'll be right here with you when the baby comes."And there's nothing to be scared of. Women have been doing this for thousands of years. One room's the same as another."Sienna's been fragile since she was a kid. She picked it up in the group home, and when her stomach flares up it's serious."You're family to her. Just cut her some slack tonight. She had it rough growing up."Once her IV's done and she's feeling better, I'll have her move out of the suite. Good enough?"He said it the way he always did, casual and practiced, turning a question of whether I lived through the night into me making a scene.Damian had built Keats Supply and Logistics on Westbrook money and Westbrook introductions. But whenever Sienna was inv

Chapter 2

It was a post Sienna had just put up.In the photo she was in silk pajamas, stretched out comfortably in the private maternity bed I had paid for, tucked under a soft down comforter.There was a toy poodle in her arms, newly bought.And the dog was wearing an exquisite cotton baby outfit.My eyes locked on the screen and I stopped breathing.It was a designer piece. I had spent three solid months on it, picking the softest fabric myself, signing off on the hand embroidery, so happy while I did it, because it was the first thing my baby would ever wear.That one outfit had cost me two thousand dollars.The caption read, "Damian said the puppy gets cold, so he went out at midnight and got this. Fits perfectly, and the fabric is unbelievably soft. He always spoils me the most."Every coincidence I'd let slide came flooding back at once.The day before, packing my hospital bag, I'd found the designer outfit missing.I'd torn the house apart looking for it. Damian wouldn't meet my

Chapter 3

Blood loss had already blurred everything in front of me.I only found out afterward that ten minutes before I started bleeding, Sienna had covered her nose and leaned into Damian and said, "The hallway out there reeks of blood. I can't stand it. I'm dizzy, I think I'm going to be sick."Damian helped her up immediately and took her down to the garden for air, without a word to me.At the moment my life was on the line, every bit of him belonged to the woman who couldn't stand the smell of blood.Outside the OR the light came on, red and glaring.Denise Alvarez, the charge nurse, paced the corridor with the surgical consent and the critical-condition notice in her hands.Hospital policy on a procedure this high-risk was strict: an immediate family member had to sign before anyone cut, because if something went wrong on the table with no consent on file, nobody in that room could carry it."Call him! Keep calling until he picks up!" Dr. Naomi Prescott shouted from inside.A nurs

Chapter 4

"I'm her father."My parents came through the doors out of breath.My mother saw me lying there without a drop of color in me, in a pool of my own blood with lines running into both arms, and her legs went out from under her. She dropped to the floor and couldn't stop crying.My father's eyes were red and his hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the pen, but he pressed it down hard and signed the critical-condition notice.I'd messaged them on the way in, right after my water broke.Rush hour had locked their car solid, so they'd abandoned it in the middle of the road and run the last mile and a half to Fairgrove Women's Medical Center on foot."Elena, don't be scared. Mom and Dad are here. Don't be scared."Listening to my mother sob like her heart was coming apart, I finally let myself go under.The surgery was brutal. I went into shock twice from blood loss, and Dr. Prescott sent word out to my family that I might not make it, twice.But after all of it, I came

Chapter 5

His assistant's sobbing came through the speaker, and Damian went stiff all over. The strength went out of his hand and the phone hit the floor and shattered.Only then did his brain finally catch up.He turned his head and fixed his eyes on Sienna's face.The charge nurse yelling that his phone had been off. Sienna in the garden with his jacket around her shoulders, and how long her hand had been in that pocket."So it was you."You knew she was hemorrhaging? You knew the hospital was tearing the building apart looking for me?" Damian's voice shook as he came toward her, his eyes going red.Sienna went bloodless and backed up two steps, her eyes sliding away from his. "D-Damian, I don't know what you're talking about."I was down there with you the whole time. How would I know what was happening upstairs?""Did you turn off my phone? Did you?" Damian lunged and got both hands on her shoulders hard enough to grind bone.She looked at the way he was looking at her, and somethin

Chapter 6

Once security put him out on the sidewalk, Damian didn't even wipe the scratches off his face. He got in the car and drove like a lunatic back to the house we'd made a home in.He half fell out of the elevator and couldn't get the key into the lock for shaking.The second the door swung open, he stopped dead.Every single thing that belonged to me had been taken out of that warm little house, cleaned out down to nothing.My slippers were gone from the entryway, the closet held nothing but his suits, and when he ran into the kitchen he found that even the ceramic mug I drank out of every morning had vanished."Elena. Elena! Where are you?"He got out his backup phone and called me, and of course all he got was, "The number you have dialed is no longer in service."He wouldn't accept it and called my parents next, both of them, and found himself blocked.Every long message he sent, apology and explanation and begging, bounced back with a red mark beside it.He called my friends,

Chapter 7

With my family's money and connections no longer under it, Damian's company came down inside a week.The banks seized his real estate and his cars, and creditors camped outside the office every day with banners and buckets of red paint.Every account in his name was frozen, and he couldn't scrape together enough for a fast-food dinner.The crowd that used to circle him, all of them calling him Mr. Keats in that eager way, now avoided him like something contagious.With nowhere left to go, Damian thought of Sienna.He sat on a bench on a street corner and talked himself into it.Over the years he'd sunk close to half a million dollars into her. A furnished apartment downtown. A sports car. Spending money without end.He believed, honestly believed, that after growing up together in the same group home, whatever they'd screamed at each other, she'd remember what he'd been to her and give back enough to get him through the month.When he came through the rain and knocked on the do

Chapter 8

When my recovery stay ended, I took my healthy daughter and boarded a flight my parents had arranged for Bellecourt, in Arvessa, without a second thought.A few months later I had our Arvessa branch running better than it ever had.Out from under a marriage that had eaten five years of me from the inside, the tiredness came off my face and I felt more alive than I had in a long time.It was a weekend afternoon, the sun was out over Bellecourt, and a mild breeze came off the Vellin River promenade.I was laughing at my daughter babbling away in her stroller.Beside me, Theo Moreau, an Arvessan executive from the branch with fair hair and blue eyes, handed me a hot latte with something in his face he wasn't trying to hide.In stiff, heavily accented English he told me how beautiful my daughter was, and he kept getting me to laugh.We talked through next quarter's strategy, and every call I made came out sure of itself.I was laughing as I took the coffee and about to thank him wh

Chapter 9

By evening a fine snow had started falling over Bellecourt.I'd turned down Theo's offer to walk me up, and I was pushing the stroller alone toward my building when Damian, watching from the dark, finally couldn't hold himself back.He came out of the shadows in the landscaping and put himself directly in my path."Elena..."A few months, that was all, and he'd aged more than ten years. His cheekbones stuck out and his lips had gone blue with cold.The moment he saw me his eyes went red, and he dropped straight down into the snow, both knees, hard.I stopped walking and looked at him coldly. There was no alarm on my face and nothing that resembled gladness."Elena, I was wrong. I know now, I really do know." Damian tipped his face up and the tears ran down through the dirt on it, mixed with melted snow.His hands shook as he pulled a filthy cloth bundle out of an inside pocket, held it up in both palms, and opened it fold by fold.Inside was a cheap silver baby locket, poorly

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