Page 44 of Impending Consent

"I am. My siblings and I run a practice together. The Addison Firm."

"Wait, are you related to Torrance Addison?"

Sailor's smile tightened. "He's my father."

Jairo cut his eyes my way. "That's interesting."

"It is what it is.” She shrugged.

The conversation shifted to safer topics. My flaws from Jairo’s perspective and his greatness as a person and in my life as a friend. Sailor seemed comfortable with him, which I appreciated. I watched the dynamic between them shift. Jairo's initial suspicion gradually eased. Sailor was in her element, charming when she wanted to be, deflecting personal questions when she wanted to be guarded and asking just enough about Jairo to make him feel important. Like he needed that shit…

By the time he was about to leave, they were old friends.

"I fuck with you, Addison-Hassan," Jairo said, standing at the door. "You're damn sure not what I expected."

"But you are," she teased. He threw his head back and laughed before he grinned at me. "She's way out of your league, but I guess you already know that."

"Every fucking day.” I winked at Sailor who actually blushed.

After Jairo left, Sailor leaned against the closed door, exhaling slowly. "That went better than I anticipated."

"It wasn’t a performance, but the hyphenated last name was a nice touch."

She shrugged. "I figured it was more believable than pretending I took your name completely."

And she’s back…

"Is that what you're going with officially?"

"I haven't decided yet." She pushed off from the door, brushing past me. “I was just doing my part as wifey.”

“So itwasa performance? Like our marriage.”

She paused and turned to face me. "Yes, exactly like our marriage."

Something in her eyes felt like uncertainty. Maybe I was getting through to her and she wasn't as convinced as she wanted to be.

Before I could call her on it, my phone rang again, with a call from a client that reached out about a last-minute change. I accepted and talked through the revisions. By the time I finished, Sailor had disappeared.

I headed back to the workshop, banking the conversation with Sail for another time. Every time we made progress, she retreated and put her walls back up, and it was very fucking disappointing.

Chapter 11

Sailor

I closed my bedroom door and leaned against it, feeling too many things at one time. Lunch with Jairo had been stressful. Watching Rival with his friend showed me a side of him I hadn't seen before. The person he was outside of our complicated arrangement, and shit, I liked that person. I also really liked Jairo. He was a good friend to Rival and embraced the idea of him being married to me. I could see him being a solid fixture in our lives and in this marriage but that meant accepting I was going to be in this marriage.

I moved to the bed and dropped onto it, carefully avoiding my case files, but my concentration was shot. My mind kept wandering back to the workshop. Rival's hands guiding mine over the smooth wood and the pride in his voice when he talked about that part of his life. It was sexy.Hewas sexy and not just his damn body. All of him.

"Focus, Sailor," I muttered before picking up a statement from a witness who claimed to have seen Frederick near Burger Buzz the night of the fire.

The witness's account contradicted the timeline Frederick had given me, which normally would have set off alarms. Butat the moment, all I could think about was the way Rival's eyes literally absorbed me.

"I’m fucked," I said aloud, tossing the file aside. I liked being the center of my husband’s attention.

My phone vibrated with a text from Skylar, giving me a much needed distraction.

Skylar: How's domestic bliss?

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