After My Husband’s Paris Affair, I Chose His Brother

Five days of silence. Then a text from a number I didn't recognize.

*The penthouse is cold without you.*

No sorry. No Paris. No Isabela. Just that one line, dangled like bait on a hook.

I stared at it for maybe three seconds. Then I screenshotted it and sent it to Thea.

*He texted from a new number lmaooo*, I typed. *The penthouse is cold without you. No apology. Just vibes.*

Thea replied instantly. *SCREAMING. The audacity. Please frame this.*

I set my phone face-down on the kitchen counter of my new apartment. My new, small, sunlit, entirely mine apartment in the West Village. The morning light came through the window at an angle that hit the hardwood floors just right. Buster was sprawled across the rug like a golden puddle. I had a mug of coffee in my hand and a lease with only my name on it.

I did not reply to Zachary Weaver.

Instead, I opened my laptop and pulled up the business plan I'd been quietly building for three years in a folder I'd labeled *Tax Documents 2021* so he'd never look twice at it. A boutique PR firm. My own clients. My own name on the door. I'd buried it so deep I almost forgot it was mine. Now I dug it back out and smoothed the dirt off it.

I had work to do.

---

Thea showed up at my door on Friday night holding a dress bag and a look that meant she wasn't taking no for an answer.

"We're going out," she said.

"I'm working."

"You've been working for five days straight. Put this on." She unzipped the bag. Black. Simple. The kind of dress that didn't ask for anyone's approval.

I put it on.

The Soho club was loud and warm and smelled like expensive perfume and spilled champagne. The bass moved through the floor and up through my heels. I'd forgotten what it felt like to be somewhere just because I wanted to be. For years, every event, every party, every room I walked into was Zachary's world first and mine second. I was always the girlfriend. The accessory. The woman standing slightly behind him in photos.

Tonight I was just Alina. And Alina was laughing.

Thea said something ridiculous about the bartender and I laughed so hard my eyes watered. I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed like that. Real laughter. The kind that comes from somewhere loose and unguarded.

Then I felt a hand close around my arm.

Hard. Familiar.

"You're embarrassing yourself."

Zachary's voice was low and tight, right against my ear. I could smell his cologne. The same one I used to love. Now it just made my jaw clench.

I looked down at his hand on my arm. Then I looked up at his face. His jaw was set. His eyes were dark and furious and underneath all of it, something desperate that he was trying very hard to hide.

I pulled my arm free. Slowly. Deliberately.

"You are a stranger to me now," I said.

Not loud. Not shaking. Just clear, the way you state a fact.

I turned around and walked back to the bar. I didn't look back. Not once. Thea handed me my drink without a word, but I caught her expression. She'd seen everything.

I didn't know how long Zachary stood there. I didn't care.

---

The matchmaking thing was Marcus's idea. My colleague had been pushing it for weeks with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely believed the universe owed me a good date.

"Just one dinner," he said. "Consider it an act of rebellion."

Thea used almost the exact same words when she called that night. "Think of it as defiance against your old self," she said. "The old Alina would have said no. She would have waited by the phone."

I thought about the old Alina. The one who rearranged her schedule around a man's moods. The one who swallowed her own dreams and called it love.

"Fine," I said. "One dinner."

The restaurant in Tribeca was the kind of place where the lighting was always perfect and the menu had no prices. I arrived first and ordered sparkling water and told myself I felt nothing.

Then Kieran Allen walked in.

He was tall. Dark suit, no tie, the kind of effortless that actually takes effort. He had a slight British accent that surfaced when he said my name, and he looked at me like I was a person, not a position to be filled.

We talked for two hours. He asked about my work and actually listened to the answer. He made a dry joke about the tasting menu and I laughed. Then I laughed again, twenty minutes later, at something else entirely.

Twice in one evening.

I noticed it the way you notice a window opening in a room that's been shut too long. Just a small thing. Just air.

But I noticed it.