On Our Fifth Anniversary, My Husband's Ex Got the Honeymoon Suite I Booked novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Room 520
Hannah knocks on the honeymoon suite she paid for, her husband's ex-wife answers in a bathrobe, and he hands her a key to another room; she checks out and learns he added Quinn to the booking days ago.
At 7:15 on the evening of our fifth anniversary, I knocked on the door of the honeymoon suite I had paid for.
I was ten weeks pregnant, and I had the ultrasound report folded in my coat pocket.
I had planned to hand it to Ethan with the champagne I couldn't drink.
Room 520 was the best suite at the Halcyon Island Resort, with a balcony over the water.
I had saved eleven months of tips and bonuses to book it.
The last ferry had dropped me at the dock twenty minutes earlier, and my wheeled suitcase was still bumping along behind me.
Ethan thought I was at home in Chicago.
On Thursday he had texted me, "Conference is brutal, babe. Can't wait for Friday. Nothing to plan, I'll make it up to you."
I had smiled at that text for an hour.
Then I booked the ferry.
I knocked again, and the door opened.
A woman stood there in a white hotel bathrobe, with wet black hair combed straight back.
I knew her face from one photo Ethan's mother kept on a shelf, years ago, before she took it down.
Quinn Aldridge, his first wife.
"Hannah," she said, and she smiled like I was the one who had knocked on the wrong door. "Ethan didn't say you were coming."
Behind her, I could see my own rose petals on the bed.
The cake I had ordered from the resort a month ago sat on the coffee table, with a gold 5 on it.
Somebody had already cut it.
"Where is my husband?" I said.
Two doors down, a couple in matching vacation shirts had stopped in the hallway.
The woman had her phone up.
It was pointed at us.
Ethan came out of the bathroom behind Quinn, buttoning a clean shirt, and his hair was wet too.
He saw me, and for one second his face did nothing at all.
Then he put on the soft, reasonable look he uses on waiters and his mother.
"Hannah. Okay. Don't panic."
"I'm not panicking."
"You should have called."
"I wanted to surprise you."
He glanced at the couple in the hall and lowered his voice.
"Quinn just went through a really bad breakup. She had nowhere to go, and this was already booked and paid for."
"I paid for it."
"I know, and I'm grateful." He pulled a key card from his pocket and held it out. "I got you a room on the second floor. It's nice. Let her have this one, okay? Just for the weekend."
I looked at the card.
It said 214.
He had gotten me a room before I even arrived.
Quinn pulled the robe tighter and looked at the floor.
"I don't want to cause trouble," she said.
Her ring finger was bare.
I put my hand on my coat pocket and felt the paper there, folded in thirds.
Our baby had a heartbeat I had heard on Tuesday, fast as a bird's.
I had been so sure that on our anniversary, he would cry.
"Hannah," Ethan said. "Take the key."
"No."
"Don't be difficult."
"I'm not being difficult," I said. "I'm checking out."
I turned and walked back down the hall past the couple with the phone.
The woman whispered, "Oh my God, is that the wife?"
Ethan called my name twice, but he didn't follow me.
I noticed that in the elevator.
The lobby was all white orchids and low music.
The young man at the front desk looked up with a smile that went careful when he saw my face.
"Welcome back, Mrs. Sorley."
"I'm the account holder for room 520," I said. "I'd like to end that reservation tonight."
"Of course." He typed. "May I ask if there's a problem with the room?"
"There are two people in it who I didn't invite."
His fingers stopped.
"Ma'am, the reservation is in your name, but there are two guests on it."
"Two."
"Yes, ma'am. You, and a Ms. Aldridge."
"I never added anyone."
He didn't answer right away, and he turned the screen a little, so that only I could see it.
"It was added by phone on Monday," he said quietly. "The caller was Mr. Sorley."
I felt the floor tilt, but I kept my hand flat on the desk.
"Take her off," I said. "Cancel the room. Cancel the cake and the champagne, too."
"I can do that. The key cards will stop working at the end of this call."
"Good."
He typed for a moment, then looked at me with an apology that wasn't his to give.
"There's one more thing. Mr. Sorley asked us not to mention it to you."
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