“Couldn’t help myself,” I say, before turning serious. “You really think your family will judge you for his infidelity?”
“His…what? You think he cheated on me?”
My brow scrunches. “That’s what you told me. I assumed that’s why you broke up.”
Then I feel the blood drain from my face. “You did break up, didn’t you?”
Please tell me I didn’t wake up to find out I’m married to the one woman I’ve been sort of crushing on for years, only to discover she still has a boyfriend.
“Yes,” she says, making me exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “We broke up a month ago.”
I gape. “A month?”
She nods. “The night I called you from my parents’ house.”
“Then why did you say he cheated on you that day by the pool?” I ask, hoping it doesn’t come off accusatory. I’m just trying to make sense of that phone call.
She stares at the floor for a minute, then I hear her mumble the wordsdirty, rotten cheaterunder her breath before her face collapses into her palms. “I am such an idiot,” she laments. “Iwas calling him a cheat. Not a cheater. Because what he did was something so much worse.”
I tense. “What did he do, Pres?” When she looks up at me, her face is a mixture of guilt and embarrassment. She shakes her head, like the truth will cost her. “Tell me.”
“He stole from the bar.”
Anger courses through me, but I manage to keep it in check. “How much?”
Her eyes gleam with unshed tears. “A lot,” she confesses. “I caught him on the security camera lifting cash from the register. I went back several weeks and caught him doing it dozens of times.”
“But that shouldn’t be enough to?—”
“There’s more,” she continues. “After I fired him, I figured that was the end of it. I knew he’d stolen a lot, but it wasn’t enough to ruin us. But then he broke into the bar and stole all of our inventory.”
“He what?”
“It’s my fault.” Her bottom lip starts to quiver. “I should have changed the security pin, but I had no idea he even knew it. Since the alarm wasn’t tripped, he was able to waltz right in. I didn’t find out until the next day when I walked in and discovered the entire stockroom empty.”
“How do you know it was him?” I ask, just to play devil’s advocate, because of course it was him.
“We only have a security camera in the hallway, with none in the stockroom. But the few glimpses I caught of his shadowy figure moving through the hallway were enough. It was him.”
“You should go to the cops,” I press. “File a report with your insurance.They’ll cover it.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Thanks to me, the bar was barely skating by, and after this, I’m worried it could ruin us. I can’t let my family find out how badly I…”
She can’t even finish her sentence, and I can’t stand to see the look of fear in her eyes at the possibility of failing her family. So I say the first thing that comes to mind. “What if we stay married?”
PRESLEY
“I’m sorry.” I blink, my tears forgotten as I try to process what he just said. “I think I just hallucinated. Did you say we shouldstay married?Didn’t you suggest we get an annulment like ten minutes ago?”
He checks his watch and gives me a lazy smile. “It was about five minutes ago, but yes, I did.”
“Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why do you suddenly want to stay married?”
He leans forward, the muscles of his biceps straining against the thin fabric of his T-shirt. I get the briefest flash of a memory—my hand fisting a black button-down as he leans forward in a crowded bar. I can feel every rock-hard inch of him pressed against me. My breath comes out in shallow rasps, as he grips my waist, leans over and…
