Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 119548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
MAX: You do know you can’t force her to stay married to you, don’t you?
ME: I can and I will.
WILL: Pretty sure that’s false imprisonment.
ME: She’s not going anywhere.
MAX: What happened? This isn’t like you.
WILL: She asked you for a divorce, didn’t she?
Bastards.
How did they always know?
ME: Yeah. We had an argument. She told me to let her leave, and I lost it.
WILL: Have you told her how you feel?
MAX: Does she know how you feel?
Did these fuckers share a brain?
ME: No. I’m going to destroy the divorce papers and talk to her in the morning. She’s asleep right now.
WILL: …That’s one way to do it.
MAX: Just be honest with her. It’s the only way you’ll be able to move forward.
WILL: He’s right. I was honest with Grace from the start and even though I knew she wasn’t quite where I was at first, we were able to move forwards because of it.
I put my phone down and sighed. They were no help. They were simply telling me what I already knew.
Would things be different if I’d been honest with her sooner?
I didn’t need to think that one over. The answer was yes. All the pain I was unknowingly causing her by rejecting her would never have happened. If I’d only told her how I was feeling, we wouldn’t have had to go through all of this.
Then again, she’d been grieving. I couldn’t exactly tell her I was falling in love with her while Nana was dying, nor could I tell her as she adjusted to life without the woman she loved so much.
Telling her then would have been nothing short of selfish.
One thing was abundantly clear: We had a very long, potentially hard conversation ahead of us.
I slid the papers out of the envelope and traced the words. It was all legal jargon, but I understood it well enough. Each paper felt as though it was cutting me as I went through the sheets, and I sighed when I read the part that detailed the assets she’d receive.
It seemed paltry compared to what I actually possessed.
Honestly, I’d give everything up for her if I could.
I got up and poured myself a glass of whisky from the bottle in the cupboard behind me. I kept it here for special occasions, and if I considered my current situation an emergency, I could justify making this a special occasion.
As I turned, the light from the lamp on my desk glinted off the amber liquid, and I paused.
For a moment, it shone the exact shade of Deli’s eyes.
Her happy eyes.
The ones I’d seen right before she’d fallen asleep.
The ones she’d had as she came apart in my arms.
The ones I wanted to see every single day for the rest of my life.
“Fred?” Amelia poked her head into my office and yawned. “What are you doing here? Are you all right?”
I turned to my sister. “What are you doing awake at this time?”
“Is that a question you should be asking me?” she drawled. “I got back earlier, and Harry told me everyone had been forbidden from going into your wing of the house tonight. Is something wrong?”
Ah.
I’d forgotten that.
I sat down with a sigh and sipped the whisky, relishing the burn as it went down my throat. “Me and Deli had a fight, that’s all.”
She glanced at the papers on my desk and walked into the room, beelining for them. She snatched them up and stared between them and me, her head jerking back and forth. “Are you—no, Fred. Don’t do it.”
“I’m not.”
“It’s just a fight, and—wait, what?” She blinked at me, clutching the papers so hard that they wrinkled under her touch. “You’re not divorcing her? Then why are you looking at these? Wait, what’s even going on with you two? First it was fake, then I thought it was real, and I can’t make up my mind.”
My sister was an idiot.
“Give them back.” I held out my hand, and she took a step away from me, widening her eyes. I sighed. “You knew this wasn’t a real marriage from the beginning. What on Earth made you think it was at any point?”
“I don’t know… The way you’re always together, your physical contact, the way you sleep together… Oh, and the fact you look at each other so disgustingly I want to claw my own eyes out.”
That was rich, coming from Little Miss PDA herself.
“What do you mean?”
Mel threw the divorce papers on my desk. “You don’t know? You’re obviously in love with each other.”
I stared at my sister. “You think Deli’s in love with me?”
“Oh, only me and every single person in this house.” She tilted her head to the side. “You’re in love with her, too, right?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck and looked down. “She told me to let her go earlier.”