Page 28 of The Kat Bunglar

And then the line went dead.

But not before she heard him mutter under his breath—

“Great. Just another mess for me to clean up.”

A chill settled over her heart.

Her marriage was over.

Laila whipped her head around, trying to find where that whisper of a thought had come from.

No. No, no, no.

She needed to call Marie, their marriage counselor. Right away. Marie could fix this.

Jay was all she had left.

Her throat tightened as she thought back to the night before. She felt foolish. Exhausted. Old. A sob built in her chest, and she pressed a fist to her ribs, as if she could physically hold it in.

Jay had been her only friend.

They had grown up together. Their families had assumed they would get married, and Laila had never fought against it. She had followed him to the University of Chicago, let him steady her when life felt like it was caving in.

He had been there when her mother got sick. When she passed away.

And when her father, abrupt and detached, had moved back to Pakistan, leaving her—nineteen and alone—with nothing but grief, loss, and no sense of direction.

Jay had guided her. Held her. Told her everything would be okay.

He had been her constant. Her north star.

Her everything.

Laila glanced out the window. The first rays of sunlight peeked through the clouds, washing the sky in brilliant shades of peach and gold.

She slid the balcony door open and stepped outside, inhaling the scent of salt and sea. The wooden railing pressed into her palms as she gripped it fiercely.

She wasn’t going to let Jay go.

She would have nothing left if she did.

And as for her silly little crush on Gabriel—

He was her client. She was his lawyer. That’s all there was to it.

Ignore him.

Ignore the fact that he had painted her.

Ignore the moment when he had looked at her—and the world had shifted beneath her feet.

Ignore the way his eyes had coaxed something from deep inside her.

Something unclaimed. Closely guarded. Hidden from everything and everyone.

“Stop it,” she whispered fiercely to herself.

She loved Jay. Her husband.

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