“You’re already negotiating?” I said. “I thought we were just discussing conditions on a more personal level.”
“I’m surviving,” she countered, then let out a slow breath and carried on as if I hadn’t interrupted her at all. “We’ll be married on paper, but I don’t expect you to remain loyal.”
I blinked hard, frowning before I could help myself, but Kate didn’t even notice my reaction, talking as if she was reading from a script in her head. “This isn’t a marriage for love, but for business. For shared wealth and securing the relationship between two firms that don’t trust each other.”
An ugly twist in my chest said I definitely wasn’t looking at this the same way, but I let her get it all out first. She gave me an expectant look across the table. “Is the prenup finalized yet?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
She slid a thick stack of papers across the polished wood toward me. “I’ve drafted these additions that I’d like to have included in the final document. They’re safeguards to protect myself and my father’s company.”
I flipped through the pages, and even though I was skimming at best, I spotted several contingency plans so thorough, theycould survive a nuclear winter. My eyebrows arched when I looked back up at her. “You didn’t waste any time.”
“I didn’t have time to waste.” Her calmness grated against something feral inside me. This was fucking awful. I hated every last second of it. She drummed a nail against the tabletop and suddenly sighed, managing to make it even worse. “I know you’re seeing someone.”
It was just a fact. We’d talked about this after the game, after all, but hearing her say it so nonchalantly in this context felt like a full-body blow. My eyes narrowed of their own accord. “We both are.”
“Yes, and I don’t care if keep you seeing her. Truly, but I’m going to ask one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Please be discreet,” she said. “Public sentiment about our firms working together to buy Hinds’ company is already growing. This marriage will send it into a tailspin and any sign of a scandal would only serve to destabilize investor confidence in both firms.”
“I won’t do anything to hurt you, Kate,” I said quietly, but I meant every word. Judging by the way her calm, professional expression faltered, I must’ve sounded as sincere as I felt.
Honestly, it was worse than that. The look on her face absolutely crushed me, but I swallowed hard, forcing the knot in my throat down as I tried to shove my own conflicting feelings to the wayside before they showed.
“Look, I get where you’re coming from with all this,” I said. “How long have you been with your boyfriend?”
She inhaled sharply, almost like I’d pressed on a bruise she’d forgotten was there. “Long enough to know that telling him the truth is going to hurt. A lot.”
Her voice caught on the last word, splintering into something raw and agonized. She blinked rapidly, staring down at the stackof papers like they were the only thing keeping her anchored to the chair.
God, I hate this.
I hated the strain lining her shoulders and the tremor she tried to hide when she exhaled. Hated that this entire situation had carved that look into her face. The instinct to reach across the table and steady her hit me so hard, I had to curl my hand into a fist just to stop myself from doing it.
She was all torn up, but I wasn’t the person she wanted to be comforted by anyway. As odd it was to give my fiancée permission to run into the arms of another man, we both had a lot of shit to work through, and right now, she obviously didn’t need or wantme.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to hide the frustration coursing through my veins. “The deal is practically done. There’s nothing you need to do in the office as it stands. If you want to take a few days?—”
“I don’t.” She cut me off sharply, then exhaled and reached into her bag, pulling out her laptop and setting it down in front of her with deliberate care. “I have to do something. Anything that isn’t sitting around, thinking about how messed up this is.”
I watched her for another beat before I nodded. “Okay.”
She opened her laptop, the glow of the screen on her face making the exhaustion under her eyes even more visible. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment before she started typing, the soft staccato of keystrokes filling the office.
Finally standing up, I sank into my desk chair and went back to my own laptop, pretending to review emails that had already been answered hours ago. Every few minutes, against my better judgment, I glanced up at her, and each time, the tension in my chest twisted itself into another, tighter knot.
She worked with a fierce kind of focus, her jaw set and her shoulders rigid, but as much as I wanted to offer some kind ofreassurance, I had a feeling that the less she heard from me right now, the better.
Besides, my heart was tugging me in two directions so violently right now, it felt like something inside me might split. The woman sitting ten feet away was about to become my wife, but she was in love with someone else—and so was I.
Someone I couldn’t just forget about overnight after spending the last half decade baring my soul to her and getting to see hers in turn. Hours later, I still hadn’t figured out what to do about it.
I paced the length of my apartment for two hours straight, the city lights bleeding through the windows as dusk surrendered to night. My jacket lay discarded over the back of a chair. My collar was unbuttoned and my sleeves were rolled halfway to my elbows.
All day long, I’d been pondering the same questions. The same consequences. Stuck at the same impossible crossroads.
