Page 114 of Sweet Wicked Vows

Weeks of silence, weeks of internalizing the last eleven months with Jaxon, came flooding out of me. The harsh truth, every ugly, twisted detail.

By the time I let it all out, tears stained my cheeks, and my body physically sagged.

The weight I’d been carrying around, keeping everything locked away, it eased enough to make each breath no longer burn a thousand fires.

“Holy shit,” Lola said. “Do you want me to go and slice his testicles off with my blades? I won’t sharpen them beforehand, so he really learns a lesson.”

I laughed weakly. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think it’ll help me feel any better.”

“The offer stands any time, day or night. I’ll do it.” Lolasqueezed my hand. “I guess I have to ask what are you going to do now? Walk away and file for divorce?”

“It’s not like there is any other option.”

“Talking to him is always another one,” Lola said. “If you want to call it quits and never see him again, then I will support you a thousand percent. But, I am struggling to match up the man who nearly killed your ex, who spent Christmas and Thanksgiving with you, with the man you overheard a couple weeks ago. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It was all a lie, Lola. He was using me, pretending to give a damn about me, pretending to—love me.” My voice cracked alongside my heart. “All so he could make my dad pay for something that happened in his past. I was nothing more than a weapon to utilize at the right moment.”

I don’t believe I am strong enough or selfless enough to ever let you go.

I warned you not to fall in love with me, I guess somewhere along the way I forgot to heed my own warning.

Marry the girl and use her to take down her piece of shit father.

“All I am saying is maybe there is more to what you heard,” Lola soothed. “I’m not making excuses for the man. I just think you should know all the facts before you make any decisions.”

“He went behind my back and released files to the media with the sole intention of destroying my father’s life’s work,” I said bluntly. “He used me. He married me for what? To get access into the computer systems and dig up dirt.”

“A total dick move.”

“If you say you love someone, you don’t lie to them for nearly a year. There is nothing more I need to hear from him.”

Lola nodded. “If that’s what you want, then okay. We can start looking into filing for divorce.”

Divorce.

The word was so final.

But it was what I needed to do, right?

“All I want right now is to sort out who is going to run Dad’s company in my absence. Let me sort out that mess first before I deal with the next one.”

Then, I’d file for divorce.

I wasn’t stalling because the very notion of divorcing Jaxon was like swallowing a red-hot poker. I was simply being practical.

One mess at a time.

Chapter ThirtySix

Flynn finally returned my hundred missed calls the next day on my way to meet Kerry Zhang.

It turned out my brother’s absence wasn’t because he was lying in some hospital bed in another country or at the bottom of a ditch, bleeding out somewhere like my worst fears imagined, but instead, he had checked himself into a rehab facility.

Pride blossomed into life when he told me. It was clear it wasn’t an easy decision for him, and he was starting to have second thoughts about it, but all that mattered to me on that phone call was he decided to finally seek some help.

It was the first step.

The biggest step.

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