Page 75 of Accidental Vegas Vows

“You don’t know if you would?”

I pursed my lips as I thought it over. “I think I would. But I’d want to start over, do it right, and come back around. And I don’t think that’s on the table with him.”

“Do you want my opinion?” She set her drink down on the table, and inside, Noah prattled on about whatever they were doing in their video game that wouldn’t be possible in real life.

I nodded.

“I think you should stay married,” she sighed. “With everything going on… the custody battle, the court cases over at Blackwood, the chaos of it all… I don’t know. It’s just adding more stress for both of you. And in reality, as much as he probably doesn’t want to say it, staying married would almost certainly help him in the custody fight.”

I swallowed down another sip of wine before setting the glass on the wicker table. I’d barely had half a glass, but I just didn’t want it. “I can’t push the annulment back. Even if it’s not what I want, the stress of it all is making me sick, literally. I need to do this the right way.”

She gave me a sympathetic smile and took my hand gently. “I understand that.”

“Everything is upside down.” The backs of my eyes burned as I glanced in through the glass door, watching as Noah stood far too close to the television with a controller clutched in his hands. “I didn’t plan on any of this for my life. And I’m not upset about it, I’m really not, because I don’t even think I’d want to change what I have right now. But I don’t… I don’t even know if Damien feels the same. For all I know, he could be absolutely fine to drop me back at my apartment and delete my number the moment the annulment goes through.”

“I don’t think he’d?—”

“I don’t either. But I don’t know how much of how he is with me is just because I’m the closest person he can pour that into.” My jaw quivered as I took in a deep breath, trying desperately to steady myself. “And if he doesn’t feel that way toward me, then I can’t keep going like this. I’ll break my own fucking heart if I do. I need the annulment, and if he wants to continue things, then we’ll go from there. But for now, that has to be what I do. For myself.”

Chapter 28

Damien

The quiet corner of the rooftop bar and restaurant was private enough for Ethan to discuss what he needed to with me outside of the office. If I needed to spend another hour cooped up, sitting at my desk, I was likely to lose my mind.

“Please tell me you have good news,” I said, glancing over the small, leather-bound menu.

“Some.” He leaned back in his seat, pushing his glasses up his nose as he lifted his briefcase up and onto the table. He pulled out four stacks of papers, each held together with binder clips, and passed them to me. “We’re likely to win each of the Blackwood’s lawsuits. We probably won’t even need to show our faces at the hearings.”

I flipped through them hesitantly, truly not understanding a word of the legal jargon that littered them, not even the highlighted phrases. “How?”

“Because what they were trying to do was technically illegal. But there is still a chance that each of the companies won’t be liable for repaying what you shelled out to acquire them, so we’re still working on that,” he explained, passing me another, smaller set of papers that made even less sense to me. I took them regardless.

“We need that money back,” I said.

“I’m aware. We’re not fully out of the woods.”

I put on a show of flipping through each sheet of documents for a few moments, stopping only to inform the waitress of what I was ordering. Ethan looked far too interested in the specials as she rattled them off, and for a split second, I wondered if his extensive questions about the fish of the day and its natural habitat were his idea of flirting.

When I was happy with how much I’d performed, I passed the papers back, settling into my seat with my freshly delivered glass of Lagavulin 26.

“Was that flirting?” I asked, trying my best to lighten the mood. I hadn’t been able to look at him as a friend in what felt like weeks. He was Ethan The Lawyer lately instead of Ethan Turner, and I was beginning to feel desperate for a return to some kind of normalcy. There was just too much going on lately.

He shrugged. “I was just curious about wahoo and why they’re labeled as tropical when they’re also considered subtropical.”

I raised a brow at him. “And you thought the waitress would be the right person to ask instead of, I don’t know, Google?”

His gaze narrowed as he pushed his glasses up his nose again. “She was attractive.”

“There it is.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, should I do it your way and have Elvis marry us?” he questioned, pursing his lips to hide the inkling of a grin that flashed.

I snorted as I set my glass back down on the table. “See? That’s the Ethan I miss. We’ve been far too wrapped up in all this shit to actually talk.”

He sighed as he reached back into his briefcase again. “Then we should get the biggest problem out of the way so that we can actually enjoy our lunch without it hanging over me.”

I groaned in frustration as he pulled more paperwork out. I knew there had to be a catch, knew there had to be more than just somewhat-good-news. But if it meant that we could try to relax after this, then I’d deal with hearing whatever it was and knock back the rest of my whiskey to put it out of my mind.

---