Chapter 3

Ariel Bryant POV:

I remembered standing with my mother in the bridal boutique, the weight of the beaded wedding gown heavy on my shoulders. "If he ever hurts you," she had said, her eyes misty as she adjusted my veil, "you come right home. Your room will always be your room." It was a hollow promise, I realized now, a pretty sentiment for a perfect day that held no currency in the messy reality of a failing marriage.

She didn't want the broken version of me showing up on her doorstep. She wanted the wife of the successful architect, the woman whose life affirmed her own good choices. My pain was an inconvenience, a blemish on the family portrait.

Forgiveness. Understanding. My mother' s words echoed in my head. How could I forgive this? It felt less like a rough patch and more like a gaping chasm had opened up in the middle of our life, and Clayton had just watched me fall in.

Exhaustion finally dragged me under. I fell asleep on the sofa, still in my jeans, the cold leather a poor substitute for a warm bed.

I woke in the dark, disoriented. The apartment was still silent, still empty. My phone screen lit up the room, the glare making my head throb. It was Corinne, my best friend.

"Ari? Sorry to call so late," she said, her voice a rapid-fire burst of energy. "Is that jackass husband of yours home?"

"No, Corinne. He's not," I said, my voice thick with sleep and unshed tears.

"Of course, he's not. Because I'm staring right at him."

My blood ran cold. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm at that new rooftop bar, Céleste, for a partner's reception. And guess who's at the corner table, flashing his Amex Black card like he's royalty? Clayton Mendez. And he's not alone."

I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn't want to know. I had to know.

"He's with some girl, Ari. Young. She's practically dripping in designer labels. He just bought her a diamond tennis bracelet from the boutique in the lobby. I saw the bag. He held her hand up to the light to admire it. He looked... smitten."

A bitter, hollow laugh escaped my lips. A tennis bracelet. Clayton hadn't bought me a real gift in over a year. For my last birthday, he' d handed me a credit card and told me to "get myself something nice." The gesture had felt less like generosity and more like a transaction, an outsourcing of the effort of caring.

"I'm going over there," Corinne said, her voice low and dangerous. As a lawyer, she was professionally confrontational, and fiercely protective of me. "I'm going to pour this twelve-dollar glass of watered-down chardonnay right over his perfectly tailored head."

"No," I said quickly, a flicker of warmth spreading through my chest at her loyalty. For the first time all night, I didn't feel completely alone. "Don't. It's not worth it."

"The hell it isn't! He's humiliating you!"

"I know," I whispered. "Corinne... I think I'm going to divorce him."

The words hung in the air, tasting foreign and terrifying on my tongue.

Corinne was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was soft. "Are you okay? Do you want me to come over? I can leave right now."

I pictured her leaving her work event, dealing with the fallout, all for me. I couldn't be that burden. "No, I'm okay. You have your thing. I just... I need to think."

"Alright," she said, though I could hear her reluctance. "But you call me if you need anything. Anything at all. And Ari?"

"Yeah?"

"The girl he's with... it's Kiersten Lowe. His new protégée."

The name hit me like a punch to the gut, even though I already knew. Hearing it confirmed, knowing this wasn't some random fling but a calculated affair with someone he worked with, someone he admired professionally, twisted the knife deeper. Clayton had always been a man of immense professional integrity. He despised office politics and inappropriate relationships. For him to cross this line... it meant he wasn't just breaking our marriage vows; he was breaking his own code. He was a different man entirely.

"I don't want to hear any more," I said quickly, my voice shaking.

"Okay. I'll call you in the morning."

After we hung up, a notification lit up my phone. It was an alert from my bank.

`Your joint checking account has been charged $18,450.00 at Luxe Jewelers.`

Eighteen thousand dollars. For a bracelet. For her. While I was at home, sick and worried, he was spending the equivalent of half a year of my freelance income on another woman.

The injustice was so profound, so staggering, it propelled me into action. I dialed his number, my hands no longer shaking but steady with a cold, hard fury.

He answered on the second ring.

"Ariel, it's late." His voice was flat, annoyed. In the background, I could hear the faint tinkling of piano music and soft laughter.

"Is it her birthday?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm.

"What are you talking about?"

"The eighteen-thousand-dollar bracelet you just bought Kiersten Lowe. A special occasion? Or do you just buy all your interns jewelry with our joint funds?"

There was a pause. "It's my money, Ariel. I earned it."

"Our money," I corrected him, the words sharp as glass. "It became 'our money' the day we got married. The day I agreed to put my own career on hold to support yours. Remember that conversation?"

I could practically see him rolling his eyes. "Oh, here we go."

"Yes, here we go," I shot back. "I was a senior designer at a top agency, Clayton. I had my own future. But you asked me to go freelance. You said it would give us more flexibility, that you were making more than enough for both of us, that my job was to take care of our home and support your career so you could reach the top. You promised to take care of me."

I had trusted him. Implicitly. I' d given up my own ambitions, managed our home, hosted his insufferable clients, and nursed him through every flu and work crisis. I had made his life easy, seamless, so he could focus on "building our future."

And now he was using that very sacrifice as a weapon against me. He was treating me like an employee he was tired of paying for.

"I've changed my mind," he said, his voice dropping to a glacial cold. "This isn't working anymore. I want a divorce."

The phone slid from my grasp, hitting the rug with a soft, muffled thud.

Divorce.

He had said it. He had taken my half-formed, desperate thought and turned it into a cold, hard reality. I had contemplated leaving him, but I never, not for a single second, believed he would be the one to leave me.

The silence on the line stretched on, filled only by the distant sound of his new life, a life I was no longer a part of. The piano music at the bar seemed to mock me, playing a cheerful tune at the funeral of my marriage.

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