Page 23 of Hot Shot

“Sometimes I wish I’d stayed.”

My heart stops. “You do?” The words are thick, rough.

Nodding, she takes off my ring and inspects it. “Life would have been so different, easier maybe. Sure, we would have moved to LA, but that would have been kind of a dream, I think. I could have watched you play. I could have been there when you got hurt. When you came home. Plus, none of the bullshit I went through would have happened to me if I’d just transferred to Auburn and stayed married to you like I wanted to. So, gun to my head? Yeah. I wish I’d stayed.”

All these years I’ve been waiting on divine intervention. And now here she is because her car broke down, standing in my bedroom with my wedding band in her hand, telling me she wished she’d stayed with me.

The divine opened a window, and I’m climbing the fuck in.

“What if I told you I could grant wishes?”

She laughs, closing her hand around the ring as it drops to her side. “What, you have a magic wand in here somewhere too?”

I shake my head. “What if wewerestill married?”

This laugh is different—louder, cheerful. “My nana used to say, wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up first.”

“Cass.” I take a slow step toward her with my heart drumming.

“What?”

“What if we were still married? What if I told you right now that you and I are married?” My gaze is locked on her, and I take another step, hope rising.

She blinks, her mouth open in some cross between a smile and a scoff. “But we’re not.”

“But if we were?” God, I want to touch her. Unthinking, I take another step until we’re so close, her chin tips a little to see me.

More blinking. “That would be crazy, Wilder. Crazy and ridiculous and impossible because you filed the annulment papers.”

I wait through painful seconds. I watch her catch on. I feel my hope hitting a fever pitch…

And her face changes. Tightens. Heats. And dread creeps over me as I realize I might have made a grave miscalculation.

“If you didn’t file them…then I was about to commit fraud with Davis.”

I clench my fists at my sides and my teeth with my jaw, bracing myself.

Her lips flatten, her cheeks flushing with anger. She crosses her arms and says quietly, “And it would mean you lied to me. For ten years.”

A divine trap, I see too late. That’s what I walked into.

“Wilder? Are we still married?”

She’s calm, but it’s a facade. Her eyes are raw fury.

“I…”

“Say it,” she demands through her teeth.

My sigh seals my fate. “I swear, I was going to tell you?—”

Cassidy erupts like Vesuvius, and I’m covered in molten lava and ash. Mutely, I stand there while she yells everything I’d imagined she would on those lonely nights when I’d pick up the ring in her clenched fist and consider calling her.

How could I? How did this happen? Why did I lie? How dare I keep this from her? And on and on and on.

She’s hurt and angry and blindingly righteous, and I’m miserable in the knowledge that I’ve done this to her. I deserve it all, every punishing word, and I stand there to take it. Because another man has lied to her. Another man has betrayed her.

And worst of all, that man isme.

---