First Love or Husband? I Choose Neither Chapter 03

First Love or Husband? I Choose Neither Chapter 03

The first time I met Sienna had been in Adrian’s office.

She had just graduated and was looking for a job.

Her hair was tied back in a neat high ponytail.

She wore a plaid button-down, canvas sneakers, and an air of calculated innocence that stood out against the corporate glass and steel.

The second I saw her, I thought of Declan.

Back in freshman year, he had looked just like that too, plain in a way that made him seem like a glitch in Halewick’s high-gloss matrix.

Nothing flashy.

Nothing polished.

Like the whole glittering city had passed him by without leaving a mark.

And yet I had fallen for him anyway, hard and fast and beyond reason.

I had chased him for three straight months before he finally gave in.

He had looked at me with a dark expression and said, “Celeste, you stick like gum on a shoe. I can’t shake you. It’s annoying.”

Then he added, “One year. We date for one year, and then we break up.”

We ended up together for four.

I was the one who ended it, the day before his birthday, right before graduation.

Declan stayed outside my dorm in the rain all night, begging me not to do it. I stayed upstairs and never came down once.

Back then, everyone on campus said I was cruel. They said some rich girl had played him for fun and discarded him like last season’s fashion.

After that breakup, I never saw him again.

So when I first saw Sienna, something in me softened for no reason I wanted to admit.

Adrian was flipping through resumes in front of me, one after another, when his finger stopped on hers.

“You’ve seen this one before,” he said. “HR says she’s solid.”

Then he glanced at the page and curled his lip. “But she looks kind of plain. I’m hiring an executive assistant, not sponsoring some charity case.”

Adrian had always had a vicious mouth.

Since he was a kid, he had been obsessed with aesthetic perfection. Glamour. Shine. People who looked expensive.

Like me.

He had liked me since we were children, mostly because I was beautiful and treated him with utter disdain.

That was exactly why, when the Hale empire crumbled and everybody else was scrubbing my name from their contacts, he stepped in instead and asked me to marry him.

I put my hand over his and stopped him from flipping past her resume.

“Hire her,” I said. “I think she’s good.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“She seems straightforward,” I continued. “And capable. Give her a chance to learn, and she’ll grow into the role.”

Adrian kept Sienna because it made me happy.

At the time, he was still in that phase where I was his latest obsession.

Outside of work, he barely left my side. He was on me, around me, all over me.

And every time after sex, he would start the same line of questioning.

“What was your college boyfriend’s name again?”

“How far did you two get?”

“Did he ever touch you here?”

He would grin, shameless and childish, and ask, “Who was better, me or him? Celeste, do you still love him?”

Adrian was a man-child with a god complex.

From the day we rushed into marriage, he had carried a chip on his shoulder, and it was shaped like Declan.

Everything somehow came back to him. Everything became a comparison.

But I never said a word.

The next time I saw Sienna, she was sitting outside Adrian’s office in a tailored tweed designer set.

Her makeup was flawless. She looked young, polished, and striking in that ‘old money’ way that money can’t actually buy.

“Ms. Hale,” she said with a polite smile. “Mr. Mercer is still in a meeting. You can wait out here for a bit.”

Everyone in that building called me Mrs. Mercer.

She was the only one who called me Ms. Hale.

And in the entire executive office, no one else would have dared make me wait outside.

Only her.

My eyes dropped to the faint red mark at her neck, then to the expensive necklace resting against her collarbone.

I smiled slightly. “Looks like you’ve been climbing the ladder quite efficiently, Sienna.”

She blinked.

“You’ve been here, what, not even six months?” I said. “And now you can buy a six-figure necklace just like that?”

Her pretty face flushed instantly. “It was a gift.”

That was the moment I knew she had climbed into Adrian’s bed.

The necklace had originally been mine, a piece of ‘quota’ jewelry I’d been forced to buy just to get my hands on a Birkin.

I had left it sitting in my jewelry box and never given it a second thought.

A few days earlier, Adrian had asked me for it.

I had assumed he was sending it to a client.

Turns out he had been giving it to Sienna.