“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “Tyrell and Tyesha? Isn’t that a little too cutesy for you?”
He shrugs. “Can’t ask her to change her name. Not gonna change mine. So who gives a fuck? Anyway, what do you say?”
“You got it.” I bump his fist, then hand over the contract.
He scans the heading. “Whoa, man. Hang on. You’re going to knock up your ex?” He drops the papers on his desk and stares at me. “Have you gone completely crazy? This is the worst idea ever.”
I square my shoulders and narrow my eyes, knowing that I’m a scary-looking fucker when I want to be. “I don’t plan on her being my ex for much longer.”
“Oh.” The word is filled with meaning. “Are you sure? The divorce destroyed you. Do you really want to go another round with her? It might not turn out the way you hope.”
I shrug. “Until the weekend, I hadn’t seen her for years. Whatever happens, it can’t be worse than that. Not seeing her, or knowing what’s going on in her life… that’s hell.” I roll my neck from one side to the other, trying to loosen the stiffness. What Tyrell doesn’t know, and I’m not prepared to tell him yet, is that I’ll do everything in my power to make Ashlin my family again. If that means rolling with the emotional punches, I’ll do it. If it means being her shoulder to cry on, I’m there. If I have to woo her the old-fashioned way, with dates and love letters and flowers, then just call me Mr. Romantic. “Will you look at it, or what?”
He sighs. “You know I will. But as your lawyer, it’s my job to tell you that I think this is a mistake.”
“Got it. Loud and clear.” Doesn’t mean I intend to listen to him. He’s my friend, but he’s never had a love like the one I shared with Ashlin so he doesn’t know how it feels to lose it, or the lengths I’d go to in order to repair what we had.
“You’re a stubborn bastard.” He reaches for the contract and skims the first page. “This looks pretty standard. I’ll read it in bed tonight and get back to you tomorrow. Sound good?”
I nod. “Thanks. I appreciate it, Ty.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I’ve got this.” I stand up and drag the seat back to where I got it from. “Talk tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” He waves the papers at me. “In the meantime, promise that you’ll think about whether this is a mistake.” His expression is utterly serious. “I love Ashlin as much as the next person. She’s pretty irresistible. But you’re my first priority.”
“I’ll think on it.”
For a moment, he opens his mouth as though he wants to call me on my bullshit, but then he just shakes his head and gestures to the door. “Don’t let it hit you on the way out.”
“See you.”
I take the elevator down to my car, which is parked in the basement, and keep an eye on the shadows of the artificially lit area as I cross the concrete floor. I slide inside the vehicle, lock the doors, and then recline the seat to stare at the ceiling. My brain is so full of everything that’s happened in the past hour I feel like I need to get it all out. But who can I talk to? Am I even supposed to mention this to anyone? Ashlin didn’t say, and discussing it behind her back feels wrong.
Jerking upright, I grin. I’ve just been handed the perfect reason to call her. I grab my phone and dial her number from memory. I deleted it from my contacts not long after the divorce so I wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and beg her to take me back, but it’s stamped in my mind anyway.
“Hi.” She’s breathless, and my imagination automatically conjures an image of her naked and sweaty. I wonder if her body still looks the same as it used to. “Did you have a question?”
“Uh, yeah.” I clear my throat, and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to dispel the image. It won’t go. My gut churns, and I ache to know exactly why she sounds that way. What has she been doing?
No, Seth. You don’t deserve to know what’s going on in her life.
So I don’t ask. Instead, I focus on the reason I called. “Can I tell anyone what we’re doing, or should I keep it secret?”
“Hmm.” She hums in the back of her throat, and my sex-deprived body remembers how she used to do that while my cock was in her mouth.
Oh, fuck.
Keeping my cool around her is going to be even harder than I realized. Emphasis on “hard.”
“I suppose it’s only fair that you have someone to talk it over with,” she says after thinking for a moment. “But I’d appreciate if you could limit it to one or two people. And only those you trust. I don’t want word getting out in case it doesn’t work.”
“I hadn’t even thought about that.” One of the only things that made our miscarriage manageable in my eyes was that we hadn’t told anyone we were pregnant yet, so we didn’t have to deal with their sympathy afterward.
She laughs without humor. “I can hardly think of anything else. I’m just wishing and hoping and praying that things will be different.”
“They will be.” If I say it convincingly enough, we might both believe it. “But if they aren’t, we’ll survive. We’ve done it once, and we can do it again.”
