Part 9
Dinner with Julian wasn’t a revenge tactic. That was what surprised me the most. We didn’t spend two hours analyzing Marcus’s flaws or dissecting the wreckage of my marriage. We sat at a corner booth overlooking the dark water of the Puget Sound, and for the first time in a decade, I had a conversation with a man who didn’t view my career as a personal insult. Julian asked about the merger I was handling. He listened to the answer. He asked follow-up questions that proved he had actually absorbed the information.
When he walked me to my front door, he didn’t try to invite himself in. He simply touched the small of my back, said goodnight, and left me standing on the porch feeling a strange, quiet sense of equilibrium.
By our third dinner, three weeks into this new reality, I came home expecting Marcus to be waiting in the foyer to pick another fight.
Instead, I unlocked the front door at midnight and heard the low murmur of the television coming from the living room. I slipped my heels off in the mudroom and walked down the hallway.
Marcus was on the Milan sectional.
Chloe was sitting next to him.
Her shoes were kicked off, her bare feet resting on the coffee table. Her head was tucked neatly into the space between Marcus’s shoulder and his chest. He had one arm draped comfortably around her waist. They were watching a cooking show, projecting the relaxed, domestic intimacy of a couple who had spent the last five years sharing a mortgage.
“Oh, hey,” Marcus said, not bothering to move his arm. He looked at me with a smug, heavy-lidded expression. “How was your date?”
I stood on the edge of the rug, taking in the scene. The sheer audacity of it was almost impressive.
Chloe finally lifted her head from his shoulder. She didn’t scramble backward this time. There was no flush of panic on her neck. She offered me a small, tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“I figured someone should keep him company,” Chloe said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “Since his wife is never home anymore. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Get out of my house,” I said.
Chloe’s smile vanished. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Put your shoes on and leave.”
She crossed her arms, leaning back against the leather cushions, emboldened by Marcus’s physical proximity. “You can’t just order me around, Elena. It’s Marcus’s house too.”
“Actually, his name isn’t on the deed,” I replied, my voice perfectly steady. “It isn’t on the mortgage. It isn’t on the property tax assessments, because his credit score was too low to qualify for the loan when I bought it. Whatever the lawyers sort out later, you do not get to sit in my living room and play house with my husband. So I will repeat myself. Get out.”
Marcus finally stood up, stepping between me and the couch like a human shield.
“Watch your tone,” he warned, his jaw locking. “You are not going to talk to her like that. We are friends watching TV. That is it. If you get to run around town with Julian, I am allowed to have a friend over.”
The hypocrisy was so dense it felt like a physical object in the room.
“A friend?” I tilted my head. “Is that what you call the woman whose hair you were stroking on that exact same cushion? The woman who knows about the surgical scar on your right hip?”
Chloe stood up from the couch. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides. The sweet, helpless sister act was gone, replaced by a bitter, venomous anger.
“You always do this,” Chloe snapped, stepping out from behind Marcus. “You think because you wear expensive suits and have a corner office, you are inherently better than everyone else. You treat us like your employees. You treat him like an employee.”
“I treated you like a dependent, Chloe,” I corrected her, keeping my voice clinical and cold. “Because you acted like one. I paid for the roof over your head for twenty-four months while you slept with my husband.”
“I didn’t steal him from you!” she shouted, her voice cracking, echoing off the vaulted ceilings. “You were never going to lose him, Elena! He was always going to stay here for the stability and the money. I was just the one he actually loved.”
The word hung in the air.
It wasn’t a revelation. I had assumed the emotional betrayal went hand-in-hand with the physical one. But hearing it spoken aloud didn’t cause the agonizing pain she intended. It just clarified the terms of my exit.
I looked at her, dissecting the sentence.
“Loved,” I repeated. “Past tense.”
Chloe blinked, her anger faltering for a second. “What?”
“You said he loved you. Not loves.” I shifted my gaze to Marcus. He was staring at the floor, his face drained of color. “Is it true, Marcus? Do you love her?”
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He closed it. He looked at the television screen, then at the floorboards, desperately searching for an escape hatch.
“Marcus,” Chloe whispered. The venom was suddenly gone from her voice, replaced by a small, terrified pleading. “Tell her. Tell her what you say to me when we’re alone in my apartment.”
Marcus ran a hand through his hair—his classic, nervous tell when he was cornered and couldn’t charm his way out.
“Chloe, this isn’t the time,” he muttered, still refusing to look at either of us.
“When is the time?!” she demanded, stepping toward him and grabbing his forearm. “She already knows everything! Tell her I’m not just some mistake. Tell her you love me.”
Marcus physically recoiled. He pulled his arm out of her grip with a sharp, dismissive jerk.
“I need some air,” he said.
He didn’t look at Chloe. He didn’t look at me. He turned his back on both of us, walked to the sliding glass doors, and stepped out onto the back patio into the freezing drizzle, sliding the glass shut behind him.
Chloe stood in the center of the living room, staring at the empty space where he had just been. Her hands hung limply at her sides. The reality of what had just happened was washing over her in real time.
“He loves me,” she whispered to the empty room, her voice trembling. “He told me he did.”
“Men will say a lot of things when the rent is paid and the hotel room is free, Chloe.”
I watched her face crumble. I watched the tears spill over her eyelashes, and for the first time in my life, I felt absolutely no instinct to comfort her.
“How does it feel?” I asked softly. “To realize you nuked your relationship with your sister, lost your financial security, and threw away your dignity for a man who won’t even claim you in his own living room?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She grabbed her shoes, her purse, and her coat, and walked out the front door without looking back.
I walked upstairs to the guest room, pulled out my phone, and opened my messages with Julian.
She was here, I typed. They tried to ambush me.
His reply came instantly. Are you okay?
I listened to the sound of Chloe’s Audi starting in the driveway. A moment later, I heard the back door slide open, and Marcus’s heavy footsteps rushing through the house toward the front door, calling her name a few seconds too late.
I’m perfect, I wrote back. The reunion is Friday. Pick me up at seven.