Chapter 2 - The First Choice
Living with Ethan was supposed to be easy because he was rarely home.
Instead, three weeks after the wedding, he started coming home early.
The first time, I was standing in his enormous kitchen making mushroom risotto because stress-cooking had always been cheaper than therapy.
He walked in at six fifteen.
I nearly dropped the spoon.
“You’re home.”
“I live here.”
“You usually arrive after ten.”
“I finished early.”
Ethan Whitmore had probably never “finished early” in his life.
He loosened his tie.
“What are you making?”
“Dinner.”
“I gathered that.”
“You’re extremely charming.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He stayed.
The next night, he came home at seven.
Then six forty-five.
Then six twenty.
Soon he started appearing at Wild June with coffee.
My employees adored him.
“Your husband is here again,” my assistant Sarah would announce.
“He has a name.”
“Yes. Billionaire Flower-Shop Stalker.”
“He doesn’t stalk me.”
Sarah looked through the window.
Ethan stood outside holding two lattes, watching me arrange white garden roses.
“That man looks at you like the rest of us have been erased from the room.”
My hands paused.
“Sarah.”
“I’m just saying.”
I did not let myself believe it.
Hope is dangerous when you have spent years surviving without it.
Then one December evening, Ethan found me asleep on the couch.
I woke beneath a blanket I had not put there.
He was sitting in the armchair across from me reading financial reports.
“You could have gone upstairs,” I murmured.
“You looked comfortable.”
“You stayed down here?”
He glanced at me.
“You were having a nightmare.”
Embarrassment flooded me.
“I do that sometimes.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“You’ve been doing it for months.”
I stared at him.
He had known.
He had heard me.
And he had never mentioned it.
“What do you do?”
His eyes returned to the report.
“I wait until you stop.”
Something in my chest cracked open.
Our marriage changed by inches.
Coffee.
Shared dinners.
Sunday mornings.
His hand at my waist crossing streets.
My flowers appearing in his office.
His suits appearing over the back of my shop chair while he helped me close.
Then one snowy February night, standing beside our bedroom window, Ethan kissed me.
Not because a contract required it.
Not because anyone was watching.
He touched my cheek and waited.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes.”
The kiss was gentle.
Almost cautious.
That made it more devastating.
Afterward, he rested his forehead against mine.
“This wasn’t part of the arrangement.”
“No.”
“Do you regret it?”
I swallowed.
“No.”
“Good.”
Our supposedly practical marriage stopped being practical after that.
Six months later, Victoria Ashford returned to New York.
And now she stood across from us at Calder House, smiling like she had come to collect something she had misplaced.
“You look well, Ethan,” she said.
“So do you.”
“I heard you married.”
“You’re speaking to my wife.”
Victoria laughed lightly.
“Of course.”
My wife.
Two words.
They should have been enough.
But then she said, “Do you still sail?”
I felt Ethan shift beside me.
“We used to race his father’s yacht every summer,” Victoria explained to me. “Ethan was impossible when he lost.”
“I’m still impossible when I lose,” he said.
“You never lose.”
“I did once.”
Something passed between them.
History.
Shared summers.
Shared friends.
Shared versions of Ethan I had never known.
For the first time since our wedding, I felt exactly like what I had once been.
The girl watching him from across the room.
On the drive home, Manhattan slid past the windows in wet ribbons of light.
Ethan finally said, “You’re quiet.”
“I’m tired.”
“That isn’t it.”
I looked outside.
He waited.
That was another thing I had learned about Ethan.
He could outwait anyone.
Finally I said, “She knows you.”
“So do you.”
“No. She knew you when you were becoming yourself.”
“And?”
“And I met you after.”
He turned toward me.
“Claire.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Then say the stupid thing.”
I faced him.
“I know I wasn’t your first choice.”
The car became very quiet.
Ethan’s expression changed.
“Is that what you think?”
“You needed a wife.”
“I asked you.”
“Because I was sensible.”
His jaw tightened.
“Driver, pull over.”
I blinked.
The car stopped beside Central Park.
Ethan got out.
Then he came around, opened my door, and held out his hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Correcting something.”
Snow had begun to fall.
He led me beneath the bare trees.
“Victoria was my first love,” he said.
Every instinct told me to protect myself.
I folded my arms.
He continued.
“I loved who I thought she was. When she left, I believed love was simply another variable intelligent people should avoid.”
“That’s romantic.”
“I’m not finished.”
He stepped closer.
“When I married you, I thought I was choosing stability. Then you started leaving coffee beside my laptop because you noticed I forgot breakfast. You learned every employee’s name at my office. You argued with me when I was wrong. You built a life in my house without asking permission to exist in it.”
My eyes burned.
“You became the first place I wanted to go at the end of the day.”
“Ethan…”
“You are not my second choice.”
His voice dropped.
May you like
“You are the first choice I ever made with my eyes open.”
I kissed him before he could say anything else.
