She would never be the same.
* * *
• • •
SHIT. HE’D HAD THE concierge print out the annulment papers so that they could sign them before they left Vegas together. He’d been ready to gently, kindly ask her to sign them when she’d walked into the hotel room and kissed him so hard that he forgot his own name, much less that they weren’t supposed to consummate their marriage.
He supposed they could file the papers anyway, but that would be a lie. And Bridget couldn’t lie to the court—any court—while she was an officer of the court. It could get her disbarred.
So he couldn’t ask her to sign the annulment papers now.
He rolled away from her flushed, sweaty, perfect body and looked at her. She was still breathing heavily, and her eyes were still closed. He hated to do this, but now was as good a time as any. “So, I guess we can’t get an annulment.”
Her eyes snapped open. “That’s what you have to say right now?”
He knew then that he’d said precisely the wrong thing. He’d brought them back to reality.
But it wasn’t like they could escape reality and pretend they hadn’t gotten married—before God and Elvis and all that.
And it wasn’t like they could stay married. That would be crazy, and that wasn’t what she wanted. Was it?
“We could see if we can get a drive-through divorce on the way out of town.” He turned over so he could look at her. Her eyes were closed again, a bad sign. Or maybe he’d fucked her into unconsciousness, which he would take as a compliment.
“Those exist?” Her voice was flat now. God, he wished he knew what she was thinking.
“I saw it in a movie once.”
“Really reliable precedent, Counselor.” She sounded sarcastic, which he was pretty sure was a good thing. “What if we don’t get divorced?” And the sarcasm disappeared, which was a bad thing.
He liked Bridget. A lot. And he wanted to do what they just did over and over and over again. But they hadn’t even been on a real date. And she’d been his boss until yesterday. She was already established in her career, and he had no idea what he was doing in his life. He’d never heard of such a precarious beginning to a marriage.
They’d be setting themselves up to fail. Not to mention that his parents would lose their minds over the whole prenup thing.
“Listen—”
She cut him off. “I know it sounds crazy, but I promised myself that I would only do this once.”
“This barely counts, Honey Bun.”
“That one is also terrible.” She paused. “If we get divorced—”
“This doesn’t mean that we can’t date.” At least he hoped it didn’t mean that they couldn’t see each other. Or hang out. Or, like, Netflix and chill.
“So, we’ll be divorced with benefits?” She didn’t sound pleased, but he wasn’t sure what would please her. She couldn’t possibly just want to stay married to him. Until the last few days, he’d thought that she’d thought he was just a nuisance. And now she seemed to be arguing that they shouldn’t get a divorce and shouldn’t keep dating.
“What do you see happening?” He hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but she was being totally ridiculous. “We’re at different places in our lives right now. You have a whole-ass career, and I’m still in law school. As much as I like how this is fucking with my parents—”
“I’m still naked, Matt.” Like that meant anything. They’d been going to get an annulment when all their clothes were on. And now that they’d done dirty naked stuff, they were going to put their clothes back on and get a fucking divorce. Like civilized people who had gotten drunk-married in Vegas.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
Then she sat up, and he knew he’d really screwed the pooch. She even covered her really great naked bits with a sheet. “I just don’t want to talk about getting a divorce until my orgasm fades, but that ship has sailed.”
“So we’re going to get a divorce?” He really hoped she was talking sense.
Bridget sighed, and it was wistful. And it almost made him want to take everything back. Because he could totally see himself with her. If the circumstances were different, and they had the same origin story that he and Naomi did—not that she was rich, just that they were closer in age and stuff—he could totally see himself marrying her.
But the way they’d started, a fling made sense. Getting married did not.
“You know a divorce in Illinois is not instantaneous?” she asked. “It will take at least a month, even though I want nothing of yours, and you obviously want nothing of mine.”
“Yeah, which was why I suggested the drive-through.” It had seemed like a sensible idea at the time.
“We should do it back home so that no one questions the legality,” she said, finally sounding totally sensible.
“That makes perfect sense.”
“But—”
Oh shit. “But what?”
“I guess, if we’re getting divorced, we don’t have to end our fling right now.”
“You have a point.” He pretended to think on it for a few beats. “I had planned to show you around rich-people Vegas.” She pulled a face. “You don’t like that idea? What do you want to do?”
“I was sort of thinking . . .” He was surprised when she reached out for him and said, “More sex?”
He had no problem with that idea. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that he’d gotten Vegas-married and then bungled his annulment.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE,” she muttered to herself when the doorbell rang. And then she almost said the same thing out loud when Chris came to the door. Instead she asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. For years, she let him get away with an I’m sorry, but she didn’t want to right now.
“What else is new?”
“I didn’t mean what I said the other night.” He looked down at his hands and up again through his long lashes. Ordinarily, this was the point where she would forgive him. That was how it had always gone. And maybe she would forgive him but for the fact that she’d spent the weekend married to Matt. Now that she felt the electric heat of attraction to someone else, Chris wasn’t looking so good. “You made the right choice . . . I wasn’t ready, and neither were you. Can I come in?”
“If you must, but we’re checking out, and I have a plane to catch.” The only thing that forced her to let him in was the immense history between them and the sense that he truly was feeling contrite about his behavior.
“You can’t give me five minutes?” That was the thing about Chris Dooley—no matter how much she ever gave him, he always wanted more, and he gave her nothing in return.
“I gave you twelve years.” More like twenty, if she counted all the time she spent simply pining for him.
“I know, Bridge,” he said as he made himself comfortable in her spot on the couch. All of a sudden, she really wanted him to leave. There was something about having him in this space that she’d shared with Matt that made her antsy, and she didn’t want to know what it was. She wasn’t ready for a sudden pivot in her feelings.
For more than a decade, she’d felt everything for this man—all her lust and hope and pleasure were tied up in him. And now he looked pale and tired in comparison to what she could maybe have with Matt. The part of her that always dug in and stayed stubborn wasn’t ready to deal with that.
She operated on the premise that she always knew what was best, and the only thing that could ruin her plans were the foibles of the other people in her life—her parents, her brothers, Chris, and stupid misogynist judges.
“I’m sorry.” Chris said it again, as though if he repeated it he could erase the fact that he’d mortified her in public over something that he shouldn’t mortify he
r about.
She was angry with him, and she was done pretending not to be. Maybe because she was the one who got to dole out the forgiveness in that relationship. The way of the world that made sense to her when Chris fucking up and her forgiving him was beyond over.
“I get that you’re sorry, but I don’t know what that has to do with me.” She had to stay strong or this would just be another time she forgave him and took him back.
“I want you back.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “No, you don’t. You saw someone else with the toy that you used to like but no longer like to play with and decided you had to have it back. You don’t really want the toy. You want to know you can have the toy.”
Chris stood up and walked toward her. “It’s not like that, Bridget. I love you.”
Now he says it? When she was finally ready to move on for real. After she finally got herself to sleep with someone else. The nerve of this man. “Well, you’re too late.”
“What do you mean, Bridge? It can’t be too late—”
“Matt and I got married.” She wasn’t going to tell him the part about how Matt didn’t want to be married to her and how they were going to get divorced once they got back to Illinois.
That stopped Chris in his tracks. He paused for only a second and then put his sarcastic jackass face on. It was the face he usually wore whenever she said that she wanted something that he didn’t want to give her. “You didn’t.”
“Yeah, I fucking did.” Part of her delighted in knocking Chris off-balance. Her whole adult life, he had been the one with the power to knock her off her game. Now the tables were turned, and it felt really good.
“I knew he was into you the other night.” Chris sank back down onto the sofa, making himself a little too at home. “But I didn’t realize he was going to swoop in and steal you right out from under me.”
“He didn’t steal anything,” Bridget nearly screeched. “I’m not a fucking possession, and we were never going to get back together. Never.”
She wasn’t going to tell Chris that she had never intended to get involved with anyone else after their disaster of a relationship. And maybe part of her knew that Matt was a danger to that assumption as soon as she’d met him. On some level, she’d always known that Matt would blow up both her new life plan and her old life plan. And that’s why he’d had to stay safe in the employee zone and then in the friend zone. Clearly, the friend zone had a much less stable infrastructure, given that he’d broken out of it so easily.
“So you got married, like, all drunk and shit?”
Chris wasn’t as stupid as he looked, but she wasn’t going to tell him the truth right now. That her marriage was a sham and would be over very soon. If he got Jack to forgive him, she’d have to see him a lot leading up to the wedding in a month. And Bridget would try to get Jack to forgive him. Just because he sucked as a boyfriend didn’t mean he didn’t need his lifelong friends.
But she didn’t want him doing whatever this was. There was no way that they could get back together. Never ever.
And now she had the perfect thing to keep him away from her. Surely he’d respect the institution that he was so reticent about entering into. “I’m married to Matt now, and all this is moot.”
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’re giving me the lawyer face again.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Still, she looked away from him.
Chris stood up again, studied her face closely. “You’re in love with this guy, aren’t you?”
“Why else would I have married him?” She wasn’t in love with Matt, but he was the kind of guy she could fall in love with if she allowed herself to. She wasn’t ready for how Matt could change her life. Given his family’s wealth, he was from a different planet than her. They had virtually nothing in common, and he definitely wasn’t in love with her. Lust, they had established. But she would fall for him hard and fast if they kept fooling around.
“I don’t know, to make me jealous?” Chris certainly had a high opinion of himself, but she hadn’t given him any reason to doubt her. Ever. Not even when they’d been broken up for more than two years.
At that moment, she was struck by how pathetic that was. There was nothing special about Chris. He was just a guy. And he’d never been in love with her. But she’d just had to force things, hold things together, through sheer will for years.
With the distance provided by her sham marriage to Matt, she could see how messed up that was. And it made her question whether she had ever been in love with Chris or if she’d just imprinted on him because he was there.
But she knew she wouldn’t figure it out with Chris trying to get back into her life. So she needed Matt for the time being. And she wouldn’t figure herself out if she let herself fall for Matt. So she needed to keep as much distance as this situation allowed.
So she would stay married to Matt until Jack and Hannah’s wedding—or at least she would try to convince Matt to not tell anyone that they’d gotten divorced. But she and Matt wouldn’t actually be involved. They’d just go back to being friends.
The perfect plan, right?
“I have to go, Chris.”
He dragged his feet leaving the room. Before she closed the door on him, he turned and got close, way too close. “Just remember what we had together.”
She rolled her eyes and shut the door.
* * *
• • •
THEY FLEW COMMERCIAL BACK to Chicago. Bridget didn’t ask questions, and she was kind of grateful for the din of the airport—still some people wanting to play one more round of slots before returning to the real world. She didn’t want to talk to Matt. Who knew that getting married could make things more awkward?
Well, technically, she did. You were supposed to marry your best friend, but that hadn’t so much worked out for her. And the only other marriage she’d seen up close, her parents’, had been super-awkward. Still, she should say something while they sat in the first-class lounge, sipping on drinks.
But Matt also looked reticent, his brow wrinkled like it did when the copier at the office didn’t work. And she had the feeling that whatever problem he was working out in his head was bigger than a paper jam.
“Are you okay?” She figured that was what a supportive wife would say. Hannah would probably tell Jack that he needed to look cheerier while drinking champagne. But Matt wasn’t like her brother. Jack would tell Hannah that he had plenty of problems to deal with being engaged to her. Matt wouldn’t strike back like that. Partially because she’d been his boss for much longer than she’d been his wife. Partially because he didn’t have the years of training in sarcasm and its power that she did in having siblings.
He looked at her then with an almost steely look in his eyes. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“I’m sorry I kind of disappeared after we—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” He turned his body so it was facing her. “I just—I don’t want it to end.”
“You don’t want what to end?”
He motioned between them. “Us. I want there to be an us.”
“So, you think we should date during and after our divorce?” She didn’t mean for that to come out as loud as it did. “But I thought we were in different places in our lives. You’re still in law school.” She parroted his reasons for wanting to end things back to him.
“For, like, eight more months.” He smiled.
“Why do you want to date me? What’s the point if we’re not going anywhere?” She had to talk some sense into him. They were getting divorced, and that was not an auspicious beginning to a relationship. “I was a kind of straight-up bitch to you when you were my intern.”
“I acted like a cocky little shit the first day.” He shrugged. “I deserved it.”
“So, you don’t want to be
married to me, but you want to date me—possibly long-term. What, precisely, is the point of that?” Bridget had to conduct this like a cross-examination. She needed to treat this like she did every other problem that did not make sense—take it apart on the stand.
He gave her a long, slow look that told her he liked at least one thing about her, and heat rushed to her cheeks. “I think I made the point very clear on the floor of the penthouse. And then in the bedroom. All night.”
That look and that memory made her feel hot all over, but she forced herself to roll her eyes at him. “Not worth the trouble.”
“Says who?” He leaned in and she got a whiff of his demon sex pheromones again. “We don’t have to be married to have some fun. Honestly, the kind of trouble we could get up to not being married sounds like a whole lot more fun than staying married.”
He had her there. She wasn’t exactly an expert. All of the marriages in her family had ended in disaster so far. She had hope for Jack and Hannah, but they were a special case of two good people.
Given how her relationship with Chris had ended, she was either so much like her father that she’d bore him to tears after a few years, or so much like her mother that she’d bug out as soon as things got tedious or overwhelming. And when you were dealing with living a life with another person, things always got overwhelming.
And all the marriages she dealt with at work ended even worse than the rather quotidian explosions of the ones in her personal life. She didn’t think that Matt was like one of those monsters, but stranger things had happened.
“It will end badly.” She knew it was a weak sort of defense, but entering into some sort of amorphous, undefined affair with her former intern, ex-husband, and possible financial benefactor was all kinds of messy. It would probably be better to stay married and see where things went. Get divorced later. But she knew that Matt would never agree to that. He would never know for sure that she wasn’t after his trust fund.
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