Chapter 2 The Other Side of the Storm

I told the cab to let me out two blocks early. I told myself it was because the rain had eased into something walkable, but really I just needed a few extra minutes to decide something before I got home and had to live with it.

I'd made it half a block before my phone rang.

I already knew, before I even looked, who it would be. There was only one person who could find the exact wrong moment to call, every single time, like she had some sense tuned to the specific frequency of my bad nights.

"Sienna." Grandma's voice came through soft under the rain hitting my hood. "Have you told him the good news yet?"

I stopped walking. And right there, on a dark street with water running down the back of my neck, the same argument I'd already had with myself once tonight started up again, louder this time, because now it wasn't just Marcus I had to decide against. It was her too.

If I told her the truth, all of it, she would want me to tell him. She would say it was his right to know, that a child deserved a father even if the marriage hadn't survived, that keeping a secret this size from a man for the rest of his life was a heavier thing to carry than I understood yet. And some small, tired part of me almost wanted her to talk me into it, wanted someone else to make the decision so I wouldn't have to keep carrying the whole weight of it alone.

"No, Grandma." The words came out smaller than I meant them to. "We're divorced."

Silence on the other end. Not the empty kind. The kind where I could picture her exactly, setting her cup down slowly, her hand tightening just slightly around the phone.

"Divorced?" she finally said, like she needed to taste the word before she could let herself believe it.

"Yes, Grandma."

A pause, longer this time. Then, careful, testing, "And the baby. Are you still going to tell him?"

This was the moment. I could feel it the way you feel a step before you take it, that half second where you could still turn back. I could tell her everything, let her carry some of this with me, let her push me toward the version of this story where Marcus knew, where lawyers got involved, where this baby had a father's name attached to it whether that father wanted the attachment or not.

Or I could hold the line I'd already drawn for myself in that dining room an hour ago.

"No," I said. "I won't."

"Why not, sweetheart?"

"Because I don't want to." My voice shook on the last word, though I tried to keep it steady, tried to sound like a decision instead of a wound. "And he's never going to know."

I braced for her to push back the way I'd been afraid she would. She didn't. That was the thing about my grandmother, she'd spent enough years raising me to recognize the particular kind of quiet that meant I'd already made up my mind all the way down to the bone. Arguing with me now would be like arguing with a locked door, and she knew it, because she was the one who'd taught me how to lock it in the first place.

"I'll send someone to get you," she said instead, gentler now. "You shouldn't be out in this alone."

"I already have a cab coming, Grandma. I'm almost home."

We said goodbye, and I stood there another moment after the call ended, rain soaking through my shoulders, holding onto the strange, unsteady relief of having chosen and not been talked out of it.

By the time the cab pulled up outside my building, my hands had barely warmed. I climbed the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, needing the movement, needing my body to match the storm still sitting in my chest, the one that had nothing to do with the weather.

-

Across town, Marcus poured two glasses of wine before he'd even taken off his coat.

He handed one to Bianca, who curled into the corner of the couch like she'd already claimed it, like the space had been waiting for her longer than a single evening.

"Finally," she said, lifting her glass toward him, her smile reaching all the way to her eyes. "She's left. Finally, we get to be happy."

He didn't answer right away. His gaze had drifted past her, toward the front door, toward the space where Sienna had stood less than an hour ago before walking out into the rain without once looking back.

His phone sat on the counter a few feet away. He found himself glancing at it more than once, some half-formed thought sitting just under his ribs that he didn't have a name for yet. Call her. Make sure she got home alright. It would have taken thirty seconds. It would have meant nothing, he told himself. Just decency. Just what any reasonable person would do after a night like that.

He didn't move toward it.

"You're not happy?" Bianca's smile faltered at the edges, just slightly, just enough to notice.

He looked at his phone one more time, and then, deliberately, he looked away from it and back at her instead. That was the choice. Small, almost invisible, the kind of decision that doesn't feel like one while you're making it. He chose the woman in front of him over the one who'd just walked out into a storm, and told himself it was the easy choice, the obvious one, the one he'd wanted for months.

"Yes," he said finally. "I'm happy."

Her smile came back, and she leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder like she'd already earned that space. He let her. He even lifted his arm around her, going through the motions of a man who'd gotten exactly what he wanted.

But his eyes drifted to the wine in his glass, and before he could stop it, he found himself thinking of a smile he hadn't seen in longer than he wanted to admit. Not the practiced one Sienna wore for cameras and dinner parties. A real one, from early on, before the arrangement between their grandparents had settled into routine, and the routine had settled into distance.

Their marriage had never started with love. Everyone knew that. Two families, two fortunes, a business deal with a wedding attached. There had never been love in it from the beginning.

So why, he wondered, still not reaching for the phone, did some part of him feel like he'd just made a choice he wouldn't be able to take back either.

Bianca's voice drifted on beside him, something about restaurants, about finally being able to go out together without hiding, but it sounded distant, half swallowed by the rain against the windows and the memory of footsteps walking away without once looking back.

He lifted his glass and drank, and told himself the feeling sitting in his chest was nothing at all.

He almost believed it. And he still didn't pick up the phone.