My Ex-Husband Followed Me After Marrying His Mistress

The boutique on Madison had a green awning and a doorman who knew me by name. I'd spent an hour inside picking out a dress for Riley — something with tulle, because Riley had strong opinions about tulle — and I was tucking the garment bag over my arm when I stepped out onto the sidewalk.

The air smelled like rain that hadn't come yet.

"Celeste."

I turned.

Scarlet Munoz was standing three feet away.

She wore a camel coat that probably cost more than a used car. Her heels were red. Her lipstick matched. Her hair had that specific kind of shine that only came from a stylist and good lighting, and right now the lighting was overcast Manhattan gray, so it must have been the stylist.

Her face wasn't shining. Her face was tight.

"Scarlet," I said.

She stepped closer. "We need to talk."

I shifted the garment bag. "We really don't."

"He's been coming to see you." Her voice was low. Controlled. Practiced. "Don't insult me by pretending you don't know what I mean."

I looked at her.

She wasn't a stupid woman. I could see her calculating, even now — reading my face, my posture, the bag on my arm. Adjusting the pitch of her performance to whatever she thought would land.

"Scarlet," I said. "I have a car waiting."

"Two weeks." Her jaw worked. "Our gala is in two weeks. And he's been driving out to the Hamptons, showing up at cafés, following you around the city like a stray dog. So you tell me right now — what are you doing?"

A woman with a stroller angled around us on the sidewalk.

I waited until she passed.

"I'm buying my daughter a dress," I said.

"Don't be cute with me."

"I'm not being cute. I'm being literal."

Her nostrils flared. "You think this is funny."

"I think it's a Tuesday."

"You lost." Her voice climbed a note. She caught it. Pulled it back down. "Six years ago, you lost. And now — what, you can't accept it? You see him happy with me and you can't stand it, so you're pulling him back in like some pathetic —"

"Scarlet."

"— desperate ex-wife who —"

"Scarlet."

She stopped.

I let the silence sit for a beat. Long enough to feel.

Then I smiled. Not wide. Just enough.

"Sweetheart," I said. "I threw him away."

Her mouth opened.

"You picked him out of my trash," I said. "And now you're scared I want him back?"

A man walked past with a coffee. Didn't look at us.

I adjusted the garment bag on my arm.

"Trust me," I said. "I don't do landfill recycling."

Her face did something I'd never seen it do on television.

It cracked.

Just for a second. The mouth went slack. The eyes went wet. Something raw and young and humiliated flickered underneath the contouring, and then the PR training kicked back in and she pulled the mask up so hard I could almost hear it click.

But I'd seen it.

She'd seen me see it.

"You —" Her voice was thin.

"Have a nice day, Scarlet."

I walked past her.

My driver was double-parked at the corner. He opened the door. I slid in. The garment bag rustled against my knees.

Through the tinted window, I saw her.

Still standing on the sidewalk. One hand pressed flat against her stomach. The other in a fist at her side.

The car pulled away.

I let out a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding.

Then I laughed. Once. Quietly. To myself.

***

Scarlet's heels hit the marble of the penthouse foyer like small, precise gunshots.

Bryce was on the couch. Laptop open. Phone in one hand. He didn't look up.

"Bryce."

"Hm."

"Bryce."

He looked up. Read her face. Set the phone down. "What."

"Your ex-wife."

Something flickered behind his eyes. He closed the laptop slowly. "What about her."

"You've been seeing her."

"I ran into her."

"Three times?"

He leaned back. Ran a hand through his hair. "Scarlet."

"Don't say my name like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm being unreasonable." Her voice was tight. She was holding it flat, the way she'd been trained. "Our engagement gala is in fourteen days. Fourteen. And you've been —"

"I'm not doing this with you."

She stopped. "Excuse me?"

"I said I'm not doing this." He picked the phone back up. "You want to be mad, be mad. I ran into her at a store. It's not a thing."

"She humiliated me today."

He glanced up. "You went to see her?"

Her jaw tightened.

He laughed. Short. Almost amused. "Jesus, Scarlet. You went to her."

"Because you keep —"

"You went to her, and she said something that stung, and now it's my fault?"

"Bryce —"

"I have work," he said. He opened the laptop again. "Go take a bath or something."

She stood there.

He didn't look up.

Six years. Six years of being the one he watched walk into a room. Six years of him tracking her from across a party the way a man tracks weather.

He wasn't tracking her now.

Her hand pressed against her stomach again. The same place it had pressed on the sidewalk.

"Bryce," she said quietly. "Do you love me?"

His fingers paused on the keyboard.

Just for a second.

Then they kept typing.

"Don't be dramatic," he said.

She stood in the middle of the foyer a long time.

He never looked up.