Page 43 of The Billionaire's Wife

“How can we help?” Cody glanced around the table. “I’m assuming everyone wants to help if we can?”

The guys all nodded.

A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed. “I wish I had a clue.”

Cody laughed. “Man, we’ve wished that about you for a long time.”

I chuckled along with the rest of the guys. “Seriously, though. I just wanted you to be in the loop, since you’re always telling me I don’t share enough.”

“You have to admit, leaving out a whole wife was kind of a big deal.” Noah pointed at me with the pizza crust he was holding. “So we aren’t wrong.”

“No. You’re right. I’m so used to keeping things quiet. Client confidentiality and all that.” Of course, my marriage to Faith predated any kind of lawyerly privilege, but maybe they’d let it slide.

Noah shot me a look that conveyed, clearly, that he saw my hedging. At least he didn’t say anything about it. I’d take the small favor.

“We can pray.” Scott looked up from his perusal of the pizza in the middle of the table without taking another slice. “That’s not a last resort, you know?”

I winced. “You’re right, too. And prayer is absolutely something I need. I’m not as faithful with that as I’d like to be.”

“Who is?” Wes reached for his drink. “Honestly, it’s easy to fall into the trap of saying you’ll pray and really meaning it, but then life happens, and it’s the first thing to go.”

Austin cleared his throat. “This might be cheesy.”

I laughed. “With an intro like that, I can almost guarantee it.”

“Quiet, you.” Austin gave me his sternest teacher glare. “But Kayla and I have set some alarms on our phones to remind us. We translated the month and day of our birthdays into times to remind us to pray for each other. Her due date reminds us to pray for the baby. That kind of thing.”

“So you pray at twelve twenty-five every day for the baby?” Cody’s grin was huge. “I love that. Although I still feel for the kid if he’s born on Christmas.”

“He? Wait, do we know it’s a boy? How’d I miss that?” Scott’s gaze bounced between Austin and Cody.

“We don’t.” Austin held up a hand. “Kayla refuses to be told. I thought about sneaking the info out of the doctor, but I know I’d slip up. I just try to use random pronouns, because ‘it’ doesn’t seem right, and as far as we know there’s just one in there, so ‘they’ is confusing.”

“Teachers and their grammar nerdiness.” Scott’s grin made it clear he was joking. “Back on topic though? I love that. I’m also adding the twelve twenty-five in.”

Noah looked at me, one eyebrow lifted. “Your birthday is July fourth, right?”

I nodded. I’d hated it growing up, but slowly learned to appreciate having a built-in celebration every year. Now that I was older, mostly my birthday slid by with only my parents mentioning it. But that was also fine. At this point, I bought what I wanted when I wanted it, so it wasn’t as if I was in need of gifts.

“All right, seven oh four it is. I’m going p.m. myself, because I don’t want to have to form coherent thoughts at seven oh four on Saturday mornings.” Noah looked up from his phone and glanced around the table. “You can all choose what works for you.”

“I can add information to my alarms.” Wes sounded slightly amazed. I guess he wasn’t big on using phone alarms for things, because I already knew that. He frowned at his phone. “Should I just put ‘Tristan’ in there, or do you have specific things you want us to pray about?”

I sighed. “Ultimately, Faith and I want to be in the middle of God’s will with this whole situation. But personally? I have some feelings on what I hope that means.”

“Then we should pray for that.” Cody set his phone down. “We’re told to bring our requests to God. It’s good that you’re seeking His will, but it’s not wrong to say ‘hey, this is what I’m hoping for.’ You know?”

He was right, but it felt…greedy? “All right, well, obviously safety, because this whole thing could go sideways in big ways. And then our marriage.”

It was so weird to say that out loud in front of people. Even though these were my friends—basically my brothers—I had to overcome a lot of years of pretending.

“You gave her divorce papers.” Scott’s eyebrows lifted.

“Because it seemed like what she wanted.” I rubbed my forehead. It still seemed like what she wanted most of the time. Maybe because there was so much else going on that our relationship, such as it was, was the furthest thing from her mind. But still. “Not because I want it. Anyway, she didn’t sign them.”

“She didn’t?” Scott cocked his head to the side. “Why didn’t you know that when you first came clean?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to look, okay?” I scowled across the table at him. “If Whitney walked out on you for the second time, would you be rushing to see if she also went ahead and took care of all the paperwork before she left?”

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