Second Choice Wife novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Ring

At the class reunion the first love comes in soft and sweet and calls out the ring on Naomi's hand as hers, and Naomi answers in front of everyone with a kiss that Heath returns.

Heath handed me the car keys at the front door, the way he always did after dark.

I drove. He sat in the passenger seat with his hands on his knees and watched the road.

We didn't talk for forty minutes.

The Larkfield High gym had been decorated with paper streamers and a banner that said CLASS OF 2016, TEN YEARS LATER.

The floor still smelled like varnish and old sneakers.

Two hundred people turned around when we walked in.

They looked at him first.

Then they looked at the green dress, and the ring on my left hand, and back at him.

A woman I vaguely remembered from chemistry mouthed "oh my God" to her husband.

Heath put his hand at the small of my back.

It was the first time he'd touched me that week, and it was only for the room.

I felt it through the silk anyway.

"Naomi!"

Joelle Kitto came across the floor with her blue cane clicking and her red hair coming loose from its clip.

She hugged me hard and looked over my shoulder at my husband.

"Garrison."

"Joelle," Heath said quietly.

He didn't say anything else.

He never did, around her.

"I only came to watch you," Joelle told me, low. "Not him."

"I know."

"If he's rude to you, I'm throwing this cane at his head."

"He won't be."

"I'm still going to want to."

I laughed. It was the first real one all day.

Then the room changed.

I heard it before I saw it, a rise in the noise, a long "ohhh" like a crowd at a firework.

Bridget Depew stood in the doorway in a pale pink coat.

Her hair was long and gold and curled, and her eyes were already wet.

Ten years had not touched her.

She looked like the girl everyone remembered, the one who had read poetry on the bleachers while the whole school pretended not to stare.

She came straight across the gym.

Everyone made a path.

"Heath," she said.

Her voice shook a little, just enough.

He didn't move.

She stepped into him, put both arms around his neck, and held on.

I watched my husband's hands stay at his sides for three full seconds.

Then one of them came up and rested, very lightly, on her back.

It was only a hand.

I had never wanted to break one so badly.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, loud enough for the first ring of people. "I'm so sorry for all of it."

"It's fine," Heath said.

She drew back and wiped her cheek with one knuckle.

Then she saw my hand.

She went still.

"Oh," Bridget said softly. "You kept it."

"Kept what?" I said.

"The ring." She smiled at me, kind and wet and terrible. "It's Nana Garrison's. He gave it to me at the lake when we were eighteen. I mailed it back after everything. I never thought he'd keep it for all these years."

The gym went quiet around her.

I looked down at the ring I had worn for fourteen months.

Eleanor had handed it to me in a velvet box and said, "It's a family piece. Try not to lose it."

Nobody had told me whose finger it had been on first.

"Bridget," Heath said.

His voice was flat.

"Is that right?" I asked him.

He opened his mouth.

"I didn't mean to cause trouble." Bridget laid a hand on my arm. "You must be Naomi. You were the librarian, right? He's lucky to have someone so steady."

Behind her a man I didn't know muttered, not quite quietly, "So that's the stand-in."

Somebody else snorted.

A girl in a gold dress whispered, "Second choice, poor thing."

I felt my face go hot.

I felt Joelle step in beside me, cane lifted a few inches off the floor.

And I heard what my own voice would have said an hour ago.

I'm fine. It's nothing. I'll go to the car.

Instead I took one step toward my husband, and I took his tie in my fist.

His eyes went wide.

I pulled him down and kissed him in front of two hundred people.

It wasn't a polite kiss.

I put all of fourteen months into it, every night of lying a hand's width away.

For one second he stood.

Then his mouth opened under mine and a sound came out of his chest, low and rough, and his arm locked around my waist and hauled me up against him.

His other hand sank into my hair.

He kissed me back.

Somebody gasped.

Somebody else started clapping, then stopped.

When I finally let go, we were both breathing hard.

His forehead rested against mine.

His eyes were black.

"Naomi," he said under his breath, not for anyone else. "Don't do that again."

I looked him dead in the eye.

"Make me stop."

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