Her Sweetest Revenge

I didn't mean to cheat. His voice cracked, on cue. She's just so much like you were at that age. I only wanted to raise the young you again. Properly, this time.

I watched the tears fill his eyes. Every one of them rehearsed.

I picked up my car keys and walked out. The door said everything I didn't.

That was the night I met the boy.

White tee. Jeans washed down to nothing. Eyes that hadn't learned to lower themselves for anyone yet.

Six-tenths of my husband. Back when he was still worth loving.

My car had died halfway home. He quoted me five hundred and swore he'd get it running.

Halfway through, his phone rang.

The hospital, by the sound of it. Chasing a bill. He held it to his ear a long time before he said anything at all, and when he did, it came out low. Close to begging.

"Just give me a little more time. I'll have the surgery money. I swear it."

I rolled down the window and held out a black card.

"Get in." I kept my eyes on his. "I'm buying your time."

And right there, in the dark, with a stranger's debt sitting in my open hand, I stopped blaming my husband.

Because I finally understood him.

Chapter 1

The car turned over clean. I let it idle a second, listening. Nothing wrong with it now.

He held his phone out for the payment.

Before I could send it, the phone rang again.

The hospital. I could tell from the way his face went.

"What?" A beat. "Okay. I'm on my way."

He hung up. I didn't wait for him to find the words.

"Get in."

He froze.

"You're going to the hospital. You look like it can't wait." I nodded at the passenger seat. "I'll drive you."

He pressed his lips together, then got in without much argument. A while later, low, almost swallowed: "Thank you."

I said nothing and keyed the address into the nav.

I asked about him on the way.

Kai. Twenty-one, a junior in college. One sister, ten years old. His parents had gone down in a plane crash when he was fifteen. What they left behind should have carried the two of them to adulthood. Except relatives had helped themselves to a piece of it, and last year the girl's heart had started to fail. The money went fast after that. The debt came faster.

That afternoon, before he ever flagged down my car, those same relatives had shut the door in his face.

I asked what he planned to do.

He turned to the window. His voice didn't waver. "These days, if a man wants to earn, there's always a way."

At the hospital he was out of the car before it fully stopped.

He didn't wait for the elevator. He shouldered through the stairwell door and took the steps.

I glanced at the floor listed for cardiac, let the elevator crawl me up, and followed the numbers to her room.

The doctor had just come off something. Still catching his breath, murmuring to Kai about the girl.

Then she woke up. The small one, in the bed.

The boy had been clenched like a fist all night. His whole face came open.

He smoothed her hair back. Said something too soft to reach me. She sank under again, easy, like the world had never once let her down.

I looked at the friend request I'd accepted barely an hour before. Thought about it.

Sent him fifty thousand. Turned to go.

Three steps.

His hand closed around my wrist.

"Wait."

And then nothing.

Chapter 2

I gave him a small smile. "Take it. Don't lose sleep over it. Call it my good deed for the day. Your sister's sweet. I hope she's up and running soon."

He couldn't take it easy, and I knew it. But hard years file the pride off a young man. He worked his jaw around the words I don't want it and couldn't get them out.

In the end all he managed was, quiet: "I'll pay you back."

I waved it off and stepped into the elevator.

The elevator let me out in the parking garage.

I had my keys in hand, hunting for my car, when a soft voice drifted across the concrete.

"Seb. I think the prenatal form fell out in the car."

My feet stopped. I turned my head.

A black Rolls-Royce, doors open. Sebastian bent into it, lifting out a small paper bag. The woman beside him wore a soft, floor-length dress. Gentle face. The small swell of her belly just beginning to show.

They hadn't seen me.

She hooked her hand through his elbow and they smiled at each other, close, like the garage and everything in it had emptied out just for them.

She was about the age I'd been, the year I lost mine.

Our careers were only starting then. We didn't have the strength for a child, or the money for one. We wanted to keep it anyway. We just couldn't bring ourselves to choose. And before we ever had to, I lost it.

Sebastian held me the whole night through. Sat up until his eyes went raw. At dawn he swore it to me, his voice sanded down to nothing. "Cece. Just give me a little more time. When this baby comes back to us, I promise you, he'll be the happiest child in the world."

I held on to a fistful of his shirt. His grief was no smaller than mine, so I didn't even let myself cry out loud.

At twenty-four, I lost my child.

Sebastian was the smarter one. He knew how to go back and settle his own regrets.

Look at that. My replacement, at twenty-four, was carrying his.

I got in my car. My hand shook when I reached for a cigarette.

In the end I didn't light it. I just pressed my palm over my eyes and let the tears come, wearing that thin, ruined smile the whole time.

I'd made my peace with Sebastian's change of heart a long time ago. I expected nothing from him now.

So I couldn't have told you why I was crying.

Sebastian came home at dusk.

We'd slept in separate rooms for a long time. He and the woman had built their own home ages ago. Why he still came back to this house every single day, I never understood.

We sat across the table from each other, not a word between us, only the small clink of dishes.

He set a short rib on my plate.

I didn't refuse it.

The rib was still sitting there, untouched, by the time I'd finished eating.

"Your birthday's next week." He tried again. "Let me throw you something. A few friends. Make it lively."

"Throw it if you want." It made no difference to me. "I've got dinner plans that day. I won't be home."

He finally looked at me. Something tired underneath it.

"Cece. Does it have to keep being like this?"

"Like what?"

He stopped. "I only want us to be good again."

I set down my fork. And then I asked him, out of nowhere: "Sebastian. Have you ever thought about divorcing me?"

"No." He didn't even pause.

"You don't want to give Rosalind a name? She's stayed with you all these years with nothing to show for it. You don't think that's cruel to her?"

His brows drew together. "Cece, I've told you. It was never love. It's pity."

He reached across the table and covered my hand with his.

"The only person I've ever loved, from start to finish, is you."

Chapter 3

"It's just that she's so much like you were back then. I want her to have a good life. To be happy." He said it gently. "That's all it is."

He meant it. He wasn't lying.

That was the thing about Sebastian. He never actually lied to me. The worst he'd ever done was keep Rosalind a secret at the start, and the moment I found out, he owned it without flinching.

I asked him to keep his distance from her. He agreed. Then, later, he told me he couldn't.

He couldn't watch her go under and do nothing, he said. Couldn't stop himself from reaching out a hand.

I screamed. I cried. I came apart in every ugly way there is. He just held on to me and let me hit him.

Eventually I ran out of fight.

Sebastian took my quiet for acceptance. Careful, testing, he brought her to meet me once. She had a body shaped like mine. And she looked at him the way I once had. All that trust, all that need.

That night, something in me gave out completely. I stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. By the time anyone got me to a hospital, the doctors were telling Sebastian in low voices how close it had been.

After that, Rosalind never showed her face in front of me again.

Sebastian started handling me like I might come apart in his hands. Gentler than he'd ever been. He couldn't stand to be a room away, afraid of what he'd come back to. Sometimes he'd doze off without meaning to, jerk awake, and the first thing he did, every single time, was make sure I was still there.

I knew how tired he was.

But what did that matter?

However worn down he got, the second he walked out my door he could fall into Rosalind's arms and be made whole again.

And me?

Whose arms did I have left to fall into?

I'd told him weeks ago I had dinner plans on my birthday. Sebastian cleared his whole schedule anyway.

I had work, so he moved the celebration to my office.

I came out of a meeting to nine hundred and ninety-nine red roses. A stack of gift boxes in the corner, every logo on them worth more than most people's cars.

"Happy birthday, wife." He stood there smiling, arms open.

I walked toward him. Then, at the last second, I turned my shoulder and passed him by.

His smile dimmed for a beat. It climbed right back up.

"I ordered from that little tasting place you used to love. They're delivering. Have lunch with me?"

I gave him a vague sound that could have meant anything.

He hadn't been to my office in a while. He didn't crowd me while I worked, just wandered the room, taking in what had changed.

Until his phone rang.

He silenced it fast. Glanced at me. Turned his back to answer.

The office is large. We were nowhere near each other. I couldn't have caught a word from the other end.

But I knew who it was the second he turned around.

"What? You fell down the stairs?" His voice jumped, then dropped the instant he remembered me. "I'm coming right now."

He hung up. Then he remembered he'd promised me the day.

He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

I kept my head down and worked.

"Cece." It came out with effort. "Something's come up. I might have to step out for a bit."

I hummed, barely listening.

He was already moving for the door. But his hand landed on the handle and he looked back at me.

A pause. "I'll try to be back soon. For lunch."

"Don't bother," I said. "Go."

We both knew.

He said he'd try to be back soon.

Chapter 4

But he wouldn't be back at all that day.

That night I did something I hadn't done in a long time. I went out to a bar.

I don't like places like that. Too loud. But every so often I want the noise anyway, want to lose myself in it.

I picked somewhere new. When they opened a table, the manager asked how many were in my party.

"Just me."

"A woman like you knows exactly what she wants. Reads a room in a second." He smiled. "Shall I send a few people over to warm things up for you?"

I let my eyes travel the room. They stopped in a corner.

The manager followed my line of sight. Paused. Smiled wider. "That's our top earner. Very in demand. If you want him, it'll cost you a little extra."

Kai sat wedged between two middle-aged women, a smile fixed on his face, tipping back one glass after another.

"Money isn't the problem," I said. "Send him over."

I didn't wait long.

He came over beaming, the greeting already loaded. "Hey, gorgeous, thanks for picking"

I looked up at him.

The words died in his mouth.

"Long time no see." I didn't bother hiding the way I looked him over, head to foot. "Who put you in this? It's hideous."

Something raw flickered behind his eyes. The smile held. "I copied it off the internet. They said older women go for this look."

"Sit." I tipped my chin at the chair. "So this was your way to make money. Bar work."

We both knew the polite word for it, and what it actually meant.

He said nothing.

"Did you get the surgery money together?"

He nodded, then shook his head. "Not yet. Close."

"How short?"

"A hundred thousand."

"When's the surgery?"

"Day after tomorrow."

I looked at him, something not quite a smile on my mouth. "A hundred thousand in two days. You planning to sell yourself?"

It was meant as a joke. He didn't deny it.

He nodded toward the booth he'd come from. "It's already settled. They're splitting the cost."

The drink went down the wrong way. I coughed.

His hand came up on instinct to pat my back, then thought better of it and dropped. But he was close now, and the smell came with him. Cheap cologne, the tacky-sweet kind. I hated it.

I'd liked what he smelled of the first day much better. Clean soap. It had reminded me of Sebastian, back when he was young.

"Is this your first time?" I asked.

A small sound. "Yeah."

I picked up my phone, tapped it a few times, and turned the screen to his face.

Our message thread. Clear as day. I'd just sent him a hundred thousand.

"You're young. You're at the top of your class. There's no ceiling on what you could become."

"Walk out of here. I happen to need a personal assistant. Come work for me instead."

Kai became my assistant, official and on the books. He was still a junior in college, so it went down as his first internship