Her eyes pleaded with me. “Don’t, Cormac. Please. We need to talk. About…about us.”
“I’m not interested in that. I’ve moved on. You need to leave.”
I pulled out my phone and texted Maxim:Get your ass over here. I need you to remove Shannon ASAP.
She’s there?
Yes. Hurry up!
“I’m trying to talk to you, Mac,” Shannon snapped. “We need to discuss our marriage. Our future.”
I lifted my head from my phone. “And I told you I’m not interested. We’re divorced.”
I didn’t need her to lecture me about marriage. I’d poured my heart and soul into making her happy, but Shannon had thrown me away. Now that I was happy again, she assumed she could just step back into the role as my wife?
The sheer audacity of that thinking shouldn’t have surprised me. Shannon planned to be a judge by thirty-five. But it did. Shock coated my mouth, making it dry.
“Immaturity caused our divorce,” she continued in her lawyerly voice, the one I’d found so fucking hot when we were married. Not any more—just like I didn’t find her unwillingness to listen to anything other than annoying.
“I knowexactlywhy our marriage failed,” I snapped. “And it wasn’t immaturity. It was yourinfidelity. Now, again, I want you to leave.”
Her jaw dropped and hurt crept into her expression. “We weren’t married anymore. You can’t claim—”
I squared my shoulders, realizing she wouldn’t leave without having this out. Damn her timing. Damn my mother for pushing a narrative that was so fucking dead and buried; there wasn’t even dust left.
“You’d sent me divorce papers, but I hadn’t signed them. We werenotdivorced, Shannon.”
She blinked up at me as if I’d just kicked her puppy. I gritted my teeth as the hurt gripped my throat. “He was and is one of the biggest douches I’ve ever met. You fucked him to make a point. It was received, and I won’t ever forget.”
She twisted her hands together. “But your mom said—”
“I don’t give a shit what she said.”
Shannon swallowed. “I still love you, Mac.”
I shrugged. “That’s unfortunate, because I don’t love you.”
That ship had sailed. And I wasn’t interested in rehashing one of the biggest failures of my life. Except now, finally, I could see our marriage and subsequent divorce as necessary for my growth. Until then, everything had fallen into place—come too easily. And, yeah, that made me sound like an asshole. But I had been an asshole with too much talent and too much confidence. Having Coach Gauthier drop that career bomb on me blew up every entitled bone in my body. For the first time, after Gauthier traded me to Houston, I had to look at myself and dissect my decisions. And I came to realize I needed to develop resilience and learn to face adversity.
These past few years, I’d focused on being the best player, best captain, and best man I could be. I liked the guy who stared back at me in the mirror, something I couldn’t have said a few years ago. And I’d learned to listen, to ponder, to consider others’ opinions because I wasn’t always right. I liked that, too.
“You don’t—you can’t mean that,” Shannon said. “I messed up, Mac. I get that you’re mad at me. You were ready to move forward before me. I was just so frightened of becoming your shadow, not even a whole person. I needed the space to findme.”
She snatched my hand and held my fingers even as I tried to extricate myself from her. Her desperation reeked, turning my stomach. I wanted this over. I wanted Keelie here instead.
“We should start a family. I wasn’t ready before. But…but…if this is what you need, I’ll get pregnant. Now.”
Unable to wrap my mind around her words, I simply stared. Six years ago, I would have givenanythingto hear her say that. Hell, three years ago, even as I healed from her screwing Dukovsky, I would have grabbed her with both arms and fucked a baby into her belly at that very moment. But I caught the desperation in the twist of her mouth, the skittishness of her gaze.
“You don’t mean that,” I said, my tone gentle.
“I do.” She stepped forward and placed her hand on my chest, right over my heart. “I miss you. I missus. We were so good together, so in love.”
She slid her arms up my chest, over my shoulders. My muscles trembled at this—the familiarity of Shannon’s scent, her touch. Before I even processed it, my hands dropped to her hips.
“Cormac?” Keelie’s voice called. “I wanted to give you a proper sendoff…”
Her voice trailed away as she stepped into the entryway. Her eyes widened, first with shock. I threw Shannon’s arms from me, causing her to squawk as she faltered backward.
