Page 58 of Accidental Vegas Vows

He took another deep breath in, in through his nose and out through his mouth, before turning to look at me. “Grace has filed for custody officially,” he said quietly, trying to disguise his shaking lower lip by hiding it between his teeth briefly. “She has an exceptionally strong case.”

Oh, fuck.

Noah rushed over, his arms completely full, and Damien handed his card to the small child and sent him off to the register.

“How can she?—”

“I don’t know,” he said, cutting me off, that same warble back in his voice. “But she wants sole custody, no visitation. After dropping him in my life and not visiting him for weeks despite having every opportunity and nothing stopping her, she wants to take all of that away from me. She wants to take him away from me. I… I can’t just do that. I can’t just give him up. I won’t.”

He let out a shaky breath as I pulled him toward me, my arms wrapping around his neck as I forced him down to my level. For the second time that day, I found myself unhelpful, unknowing of the right thing to do or say to calm him down. And even if it made Noah question things, even if it garnered any sort of attention from the strangers who didn’t give a shit about us, I hugged him. I wrapped myself around him.

Damien buried his face in my neck, his hands gripping into my back so differently from how they did last night, and all he could do was breathe. Over and over, just breathed.

I wished I knew what I could say that would make it better, but I just… didn’t.

“There’s a plane waiting for us at the airport,” he said quietly, the sound muffled from where he held himself. “But I’ve already booked a hotel room for all of us, if you want to stay.”

“Not a chance in fucking hell,” I breathed.

He held me tighter.

Chapter 20

Damien

It was nearing ten in the evening by the time I’d managed to get everyone home and squared away and could get out the door.

Olivia stayed behind with a sniffly, half-asleep Noah, his heart still broken from having to cut our day at Disney short. I felt fucking horrible about taking him from it early, but I needed to sort this out as quickly as I could, needed to figure out how the fuck I was going to fight this and what I needed to do. If keeping him meant upsetting him this one time, I would sacrifice a good memory for a million more.

With my house completely off limits for this conversation and Ethan’s house filled with his roommate’s friends, we had two options — a private bar where I could book us a room, or the office downtown where anyone working late could find us.

I chose the former.

“You can’t just throw money at this and hope it works,” Ethan snapped, downing the last bit of his first glass of whiskey and setting it down on the table in frustration. He seemed just as stumped as I was, just as angry as I was — or maybe he was just as overworked as I was. “I’m sorry but that’s not how this works. You’re going against a fucking pediatric nurse who has known him his entire life.”

“But he’s my son!”

Ethan reared back at the outburst. In fairness, I’d put way too much emotion into that, but I’d barely been given a moment to process any of this outside those thirty seconds that I’d had with Olivia in the gift shop. I’d hoped Noah would nap on the flight home, but he was too hyped up on a sugar rush from too many churros, and so I’d been left on the verge of breaking for hours.

I leaned onto the pool table, two glasses deep and my mind a fucking wreck, and put buried my face in my hands. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m not doing well.”

“I can see that.”

“There has to be something we can do,” I said. “There has to be. I know you said I can’t throw money at this, but there must be someone I can pay off, the judge, her lawyer, someone.”

“That’s bribery, Damien, and it’s illegal.”

“I fucking know!” I spat. “Help me. Please. What can I do?”

His gaze hung on me as he poured himself another glass from the bottle. He slid off the stool and poured another two fingers worth into my abandoned glass. “You won’t like my idea.”

“I will like any fucking idea that guarantees me custody of my son.”

His tongue slid across his bottom teeth as he pushed his glasses up his nose, taking instead to leaning against the private, empty bar instead of sitting at it. “Fuck the annulment. Stay married, for now. I’ve filed the papers but it’s not too late to cancel. It will strengthen your case. She’s not married, she lives alone, so it would be a single-parent household. Two-parent households are preferred, from what I can tell, but again, I don’t know nearly as much about family law as I do business?—”

“I can’t do that,” I breathed. I’d given endless hours of thought to it after I’d sent him that text asking him to pause the annulment — Olivia would fucking kill me if I did that. And he’d already sent them at that point, anyway, so I’d given the green light to carry on. But knowing damn well that it would help now, in this situation and not the one I thought I was dealing with, tempted me far too much. “It’s not just me I need to worry about. It’s Olivia, as well.”

“I understand. But you wanted my suggestion,” he said, the words feeling far too cold. I reached for my glass, downing it, pouring another, and taking a gulp. “Marissa left you. The court will of course take into consideration her infidelity, but in their eyes, she left a relationship when she found out she was pregnant and left him to you in a state of what Grace is claiming was medical incompetence at the end of her life. You have to understand how they will see this and the best ways you can combat it, and your best bet is to show that you have a loving, stable home with two parents.”

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