Page 76 of Accidental Vegas Vows

The small stack landed in front of me. Along the top, Application For Annulment: Notice of Acceptance was printed in bolded letters, and it was addressed to Damien Blackwood and Olivia Martin.

“I couldn’t cancel it,” Ethan said, his voice far calmer than it had been before. It was almost sympathetic. “It’s not finished. You two still need to sign and appear before a judge. But the paperwork was filed and approved.”

I swallowed down the bile that was beginning to rise up my esophagus. “Fuck.”

“Damien,” he said softly, dragging my attention back to him. “It’s not finished. This can’t be held against you right now. A court date needs to be set, and you have sixty days to arrange that. It will only be official if the judge finalizes it. You can wait.”

It’s not finished.

“If I were you…” His jaw ticked as he looked between me and the heavy weight in my hands. “I would wait to set a date until after the custody case next month.”

The intensity of the choice I’d made was already eating at me, but this just made it so much worse. “She’ll want the date set as soon as possible.”

“I can’t advise you legally to not tell her,” he said, his voice so quiet I could barely hear it over the clinking of glasses and idle chatter. “But as your friend, I can tell you that it isn’t unheard of for legal documents to take weeks to mail to their intended recipients. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You think I should hide it until after the custody case,” I said, setting the papers beside me on the table. Those would need to come home with me regardless. “If she finds out…”

“She has no reason to.”

“There’s a date on it, Ethan.”

“Again, cogs turn slowly in government cases,” he explained. “Things can be filed and approved and printed and not mailed for ages.”

“I don’t want to lose her,” I breathed. His jaw ticked again and my walls went up immediately, shutting down the realness I was far too ready to supply him with. He already knew it, but I didn’t need to drive that home any further. “She’s amazing with Noah. The kid idolizes her. And she’s been putting so much time into him, so much of herself… She’s even been helping me look for a nanny to take care of him after school for when this is settled. I don’t want to break the girl.”

“You don’t want to break yourself.”

“I don’t want to hurt Noah, either,” I sighed. “If she goes… She’s been the only steady, female presence in his life since his mom died.”

Ethan’s eyes met mine, pointed and stressed and far too knowing. He pushed his stupid fucking glasses up his nose again, and for a split second, I wanted to break them in two. “Then you know what you need to do.”

Chapter 29

Olivia

Noah’s face pressed against the thick glass of the lion enclosure, his breath fogging his view. He kept swiping it away every time it became too much to see.

Ten feet behind him, Sophie and I sat on a bench in the shade, my gaze fixed wholly on Noah and hers fixed wholly on me.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Please don’t say anything,” I said quietly. “Especially not to Noah.”

“I won’t. But why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Her lower lip jutted out in a pout, and I could just about make it out in the corner of my field of view.

Noah banged on the glass and I shifted my attention. “Noah, don’t do that,” I called to him. He spun on his heel and looked at me wide-eyed, his curly brown hair sticking up in funny directions from the wind. Without that, he looked so much like his father it was genuinely frightening at times. “If you were trapped in an enclosed environment, you wouldn’t want someone coming up and banging on your glass.”

He shook his head. “I would if they wanted to be friends!”

“The lion does not want to be friends with you.”

“You don’t know that!” he huffed, spinning back around to stare at the sleeping lion again.

I rolled my eyes and refocused my attention back on Sophie once I was positive Noah wouldn’t bang on the glass again. “I’m barely capable of admitting it to myself, let alone other people.”

“You haven’t told him?” she asked. “Liv, you have to tell him. You can’t just waltz around feeling sorry for yourself and assuming that he doesn’t have feelings for you too.”

I shook my head. “If I tell him, then it becomes real. And that opens a whole new can of worms that I haven’t put enough thought into.”

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