Married to my Ex Husband’s Rival

Amara's POV

I turned around slowly, half expecting to have imagined it.

I hadn't.

He was leaning against the wall at the mouth of the hallway, his arms crossed, that same infuriating amusement written across his face like tonight was shaping up to be his personal entertainment.

Up close, he was even more irritating than the two-second glimpse I'd gotten earlier.

He was tall, put together in that effortless way that told me his suit was very expensive and really handsome.

Not that I was fazed by expensive things, I had lots of them but my hazy mind wondered what a man of his caliber was doing here.

His dark eyes looked like they already knew something about me I hadn't said yet.

"I'm sorry, what?" I asked, even though I'd heard him perfectly.

"Habibi," he repeated, like the word was an answer instead of just making things worse. "You walked in on me, made a run for it, and didn't even leave a name behind. It feels rude."

"I said I was sorry." My voice rose as I replied to him, "It won't happen again. I promise."

"That's a shame." He pushed off the wall and approached me as I turned back toward the bar, looking easy and unbothered, like I'd invited him. "I was starting to enjoy the chaos."

"Well, I wasn't." I kept looking ahead, focused on the bartender who was mixing drinks. I glanced beside me and there was a stool there that was still empty.

A small mercy in an otherwise ruined night. "So if you don't mind…"

"I don't, actually."

I looked at him, suddenly speechless.

He slid onto the stool beside mine, uninvited, and signaled the bartender with two fingers like he owned the place. Maybe he did. I wouldn't have been shocked at this point.

"I didn't ask you to sit here."

"You didn't ask me not to, either."

I closed my eyes, praying for patience I did not currently possess. My head was still spinning from the office, from the hallway, from the entire catastrophe of a day and this man had picked the worst possible night to decide I was interesting.

Whoever he was.

"Rough night?" he asked, tilting his head.

"You have no idea."

"Try me."

"I don't know you."

"That's easily fixed."

"I don't want it fixed," I said, finally turning to look at him fully.

Somehow his profile and the way his face was angled made him look really familiar.

"I don't want company. I don't want to have a conversation. I want to sit here, drink my drink, and be left alone. Is that so hard to understand?"

Something flickered across his face. I don't think it was hurt but it looked like it that I almost felt bad.

Almost.

"Fair enough." He held both hands up in mock surrender and leaned back slightly.

For one blissful second, I thought that might be the end of it.

It wasn't.

"For what it's worth," he said, swirling the drink the bartender had just set in front of him, "you looked like you needed rescuing back there. Before you crashed my evening."

"I didn't need rescuing." My jaw tightened. "I needed a bathroom."

"Sure." He smiled like he didn't believe a word of it. "You've got that look, though."

"What look?"

"The one that says somebody ruined your whole day, and you're two seconds from falling apart. Then you're deciding whether to do it here, in front of strangers, or wait until you're alone in your car."

I froze.

He wasn't wrong. That was the infuriating part. He'd known me for four minutes and landed closer to the truth than people who'd known me for years.

"You don't know anything about me," I said in a tight low voice.

"I know enough." He shrugged casually. "Husband? Boyfriend? It has to be somebody, clearly, since you've got a ring on that finger and murder in your eyes."

My hand curled instinctively, like I could hide the ring from him, from myself, from the entire night.

"Don't," I warned.

"Did he cheat?" He asked it so plainly, looking so unbothered, like he was asking about the weather instead of picking apart the worst moment of my life. "That's usually the look. I've seen it before."

"Stop talking."

"Or is it the other way around? Did you…."

I didn't think. My hand moved before my brain caught up with it, and the sound of my palm against his cheek rang out sharp enough that a few heads at the bar turned.

The room went quiet for half a second. I withdrew my hand quickly, glancing at everyone like I was some junkie.

He didn't move, didn't even lift a hand to his face right away, just stared at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"I said stop talking," I repeated, my voice shaking now. Finally, after holding steady through everything else tonight.

I grabbed my bag off the counter and walked out. I didn't wait for a response. I didn't look back.

The night air hit me the second I stepped outside. It was cold enough to sting against my burning face.

I stood on the curb for a moment, willing my legs to remember how to work properly, willing my chest to stop feeling like it was folding in on itself.

I started walking toward my car, one hand pressed to my temple, the world was starting to tilt around me.

Too much had happened in one day. My body hadn't caught up to any of it yet.

I made it halfway across the lot before I heard my name being screamed.

"Amara!"

My name, shouted from somewhere behind me, it was quite raw and urgent enough that it sliced straight through the fog in my head.

I knew that voice, anytime, anywhere.