I swallowed hard. It’s not like I forgot, exactly. I just didn’t want to have to think about her. Of course I wouldn’t be going back to the city anytime soon. “I don’t want to be with Cassie. I never did.”
Reese’s head whipped around with surprise again. For a split second, the immigration lawyer’s face filled my mind. I could answer all the questions she asked. I was still completely screwed.
“But you’re still with her,” Reese said.
It wasn’t a question. We’d both gone into this with our eyes wide open and the situation hadn’t changed. I was with Cassie. An old family friendof the Quinns, Madeline Richardson, had put in a word for me with an art gallery owner two towns over who might need a part-time manager, though it wouldn’t be until the fall. The inn was looking a little better every day. My life could fall into place, if I let it.
Reese retrieved her shoes from the other side of the room. She was about to slip out of here, and I couldn’t let her leave. She had to know my feelings were real, but the only way to do that was to give her the truth. The scary one.
I shuffled over to sit on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. “Cassie and I aren’t actually dating. I’m not her boyfriend, I just…haveto be with her. Fuck, it’s so much more complicated than that.” I buried my head in my hands, dread filling my lungs. “Cassie and I, we’re married.”
Reese jerked back, her eyes bulging. She looked like she’d been shot in the heart.
“You’re married?” Her tone was flat. Resigned.
“I can explain.”
“Since when?”
“We did it at City Hall, in the city, before we came back here.”
I worried Reese would storm out then, but she stood there, frozen.
So I kept talking, starting from the beginning: losing my job, my visa, booking my flight back to Paris, and feeling so depressed about it all. I spared no details about meeting Cassie, how aloof she’d been, how easily convinced at the same time. How I thought, right until the moment the civil servant asked the questions, that she was going to change her mind. How weird it felt when she didn’t. We were married. In it together now.
And then, the most important thing of all, the fact that I’d been mulling over for weeks now: “I would give anything to have met you first.”
Reese chortled, then shook her head, like she wanted to push away that part of the story, to make sure it never touched her. “You’re married,” she said in a whisper.
I got up and started to walk toward her, but she recoiled in such anobvious manner, raising her hands in front of her chest in protection, that I stopped. “And I can’t divorce her. I have to be with her for two whole years and pretend to be happily married until it all goes through. I can’t do anything until then.”
Even as I said it, I no longer believed these things would happen. Two years was a long time to feel hopelessly miserable, even before I fell for Reese. The truth was, Icoulddivorce Cassie and marry another American citizen, if Reese would have me. But doing so before my permanent green card was granted would be like throwing my application into the trash. I’d have to start all over, losing months in the process. Worse: it would raise a huge red flag with the Department of Homeland Security. Marrying one woman you barely know is one thing, but marrying two, back-to-back? It would never work. And then, of course, there was the money. Cassie was already pissing it away. These two million dollars were wasted on her.
“If I could choose,” I added, “I’d choose you. I want to be with you.”
Reese’s jaw went slack. “I’m so freaking stupid. Every time! Everysingletime. I don’t know what I was thinking. Don’t ever come near me again.”
She stormed past me, fury seeping out of every pore. For a long time I stood there, staring at a brown patch of humidity where the wall met the ceiling. The situation with Cassie was already headed for a complete disaster. Soon I wouldn’t just lose Reese, but everything.
I didn’t know if there was a way to fix this, to be with Reese and get rid of Cassie. To get rid of Cassie and keep her money. To have everything I could possibly want: Reese and the money and the green card and the freedom to go back to the city and start all over again.
But if there was a way, I would find it. And if I did, then that’s exactly what I would do.
Chapter 19
Taylor
Now
I want to throw my phone against the wall and watch it break into a million pieces. What stops me is that if I did, I could no longer watch Cassie drink her expensive wine in her expensive bubble bath inside her fucking expensive Parisian suite.
There are many things I hate about myself, but I despise this one the most: Cassie has that power over me. Most of my life I’ve stood by as she goteverything. Her mother’s love until the very end, the kind I would have killed for, even if it wasn’t perfect. A roof over her head. A safe space, always. The freedom to make mistakes, as many as she felt like making. A perfectly nice boyfriend, Darren, who always ran back to her no matter how she treated him. And now her dreamy French husband, her father’s inheritance, so much money that she’ll keep wasting on stupid things.
But it’s never enough. She always wants something else, something more.
I pour myself a glass of Bordeaux—you paid for that one, too, Cassie!—and hit Play on her videos. By now I’ve seen every corner of that suite a dozen times over: the sprawling bed with the sharp corners of the frame. That balcony just high enough that one would probably not survive atumble over the edge. The depth of that freestanding bathtub, like it’s straight out of Versailles. The marble tiles of the bathroom floor, so shiny they must be slippery, especially if one was to drink too much wine.
Stop it, you’re hurting yourself.
