Chapter 4 - WHILE HE CHOSE HER, SHE BEGAN CHOOSING HERSELF
For the first hour, I cried.
Not gracefully.
Not beautifully.
I sat on the kitchen floor in yesterday’s sweatpants and cried so hard my chest hurt.
I cried for the affair.
I cried for the woman I had been when I believed postponing myself was proof of devotion.
I cried because part of me still wanted Steven to turn around, race home, fall to his knees, and tell me the entire thing had been temporary insanity.
Then the crying stopped.
Not because I felt better.
Because my body ran out of tears before my mind ran out of questions.
I got up.
Washed my face.
Made coffee.
Opened the laptop.
And started documenting everything.
Every transfer.
Every withdrawal.
Every joint obligation.
Every payment tied to Caroline.
Not to punish him.
To understand my own life.
At noon, I called my older brother, Marcus.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he was silent.
“Say something.”
“What do you need to protect?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
I looked at the spreadsheets.
“Myself.”
“Then start there.”
“I want him to understand what this feels like.”
“He may someday.”
“I want him to lose something.”
“He already has.”
I closed my eyes.
Marcus continued.
“But protecting yourself and punishing Steven are not the same thing.”
I hated hearing that.
Mostly because he was right.
So I did what I had always done when life became frightening.
I made lists.
Bank accounts.
Property documents.
Insurance.
Personal records.
My own savings.
My mother’s jewelry.
My laptop.
My passport.
Then I made another list.
Things I wanted before I became so useful to Steven that I forgot usefulness was not the same thing as love.
At the bottom of a desk drawer, I found an old folder.
Northline Hospitality Design.
Austin.
Regional project director.
I had not opened it in four years.
Inside was the original offer, notes from the interview, and an email from a woman named Julia Bennett, who had once written, If your timing ever changes, call me.
My heart began pounding.
I searched her name online.
She was still there.
Now vice president of operations.
I stared at the phone for nearly ten minutes before calling.
“Julia Bennett.”
“Julia? This is Bianca Mercer.”
Silence.
Then—
“Bianca?”
I laughed nervously.
“I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Of course I remember you. You turned down the best offer I made that year.”
For the first time in twenty-four hours, I smiled.
We talked for forty minutes.
The original role was gone.
But another position had opened.
Houston-based for six months, then overseeing projects across Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio.
“Send me your résumé,” she said.
“It’s old.”
“Then update it.”
“I’ve been out of the industry.”
“You’ve been managing property operations, vendors, budgets, contracts, and renovations, correct?”
I looked around my kitchen.
“Yes.”
“Then you’ve been working. You just stopped calling it work.”
After we hung up, I sat very still.
You just stopped calling it work.
Something about that sentence broke through me.
For years, Steven had said Bianca handles everything.
And somehow I had heard that as evidence that my ambitions mattered less.
May you like
By evening, my résumé was open on the screen.
By midnight, it was sent.
