I Lost Our Baby While He Danced With Her Chapter 03

I Lost Our Baby While He Danced With Her Chapter 03

Three days later, Grant called me up to his office to deliver surgical files.

I hadn’t expected to find Bree Vance sitting at his desk, applying lipstick in a compact mirror like she owned the chair, the desk, and the man.

“Hi, Sienna.” Her eyes glittered with lazy provocation.

I gave her my gentlest smile. A vain little arsonist and an emotionally bankrupt surgeon—honestly, a perfect match.

I set the files down and turned to leave. Grant stopped me.

“Sienna. My antihistamines.”

I glanced at Bree’s open makeup bag and understood instantly. Grant had grown up wrapped in money and fragile health—he was violently allergic to half the perfume counter. After we married, he’d snapped at me for buying a new foundation: Do you even care about your husband? So I stopped wearing makeup entirely. For five years, I carried his medication instead of my own lipstick. It became a reflex. It became a personality.

“I didn’t bring them,” I said.

My eyes stayed on Bree’s perfume bottle. Not because I wanted it. Because after the divorce, I could finally wear whatever I wanted, and his airway would be someone else’s department.

Disbelief flashed across his face. “How could you not bring them? You know my condition—”

“Sienna, that’s not right,” Bree cooed, pouring gasoline with a teaspoon. “How can you not care about Grant’s health?”

Grant fell silent. Even he could do the math: I had only forgotten a pill bottle. The thing closing his throat was sitting on his desk wearing false lashes.

“I’ll drive you home to get them,” he said—then looked awkward, because the sentence made no sense. He needed the meds. I didn’t.

“Go yourself. I have a lunch appointment.”

I really did.

Margot Hale was the sharpest divorce attorney in the state. I met her at the bistro next to the hospital and walked her through what I wanted: speed, silence, zero spousal support. Nothing he could fight. Nothing he could hold hostage.

“So you’re actually divorcing Grant Caldwell.” Margot studied me with something close to pity. No one at the hospital even knew we were married—Grant had made sure of that. Don’t bring personal matters to work, Sienna. “He’ll come after you professionally. Men like him don’t lose in public.”

“Let him come,” I said. “My husband cheated. But it’s fine. I want out more than he wants her.”

As I said it, Grant and Bree walked in. Hand in hand.

The second he saw me, he dropped her hand—the reflex of a man who wants both the affair and the alibi.

I gave them a courteous smile, flagged the server, and asked to move our table to the sunny patio. Not a retreat. Sunlight, and the courtesy of not disturbing their date.

Because I still remembered two months ago. The mall. I’d been buying his birthday gift; he’d been shopping with Bree. Bree stood there poised and amused while Grant tore into me in front of strangers—accused me of stalking him, of embarrassing him in front of “a client’s family.” I crouched outside that mall and cried until dark.

This time, I chose distance. Distance, and a notarized petition.

Margot left for court. I sat in the sun, sipping coffee, humming, polishing the final clauses on my laptop.

A shadow fell across the table.

“Sienna. Should I drive you back?” Grant stood there with a faint, conciliatory smile. Bree was nowhere in sight. At the collar of his shirt sat a lipstick print, bright as a wound.

“You and your girlfriend really know how to have fun,” I said mildly.

He noticed the stain and panicked, scrubbing at it. “She held my jacket while I paid—I didn’t notice—”

“Should I drive you back?” he asked again, almost careful.

“Sorry, give me a minute. I’m almost done.” I’d never once dared make Grant Caldwell wait. This was a first. He seemed strangely pleased by it—craned his neck toward my screen.

“What’s that?”

I kept typing and answered lazily.

“Our divorce agreement. I’m just fixing the part about how you keep everything.”