“Oh shit.” Eli’s gaze slashed to Roman. “You didn’t bring Babushka in on this one, too, did you?”
Roman tensed. “Rex and Tonya decided to stay together all on their own.”
“With help from you and your grandmother?” Sadie needed to know the answer to that.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
All that time she’d spent… Wasted. The undermining that had happened right at her feet stung worse than Oliver’s law school betrayal. Because this time it was Roman. This time she’d hoped it’d be different.
Sadie heaved a breath. The tightening from before didn’t release, but the loss of feeling in all of her extremities radiated into her chest. She welcomed the detachment—it didn’t hurt.
It also wouldn’t last forever.
The arrows were pointing in a direction she didn’t want to go, but she now understood it was the only way to keep moving forward. Roman had told her to keep moving forward when he’d left. That’s what she’d done, all this time.
Holy crap, crap, crap.
This was law school internships and Chicago law all over again—everything falling apart because some guy thought he knew best and got involved where he didn’t belong. He thought he was doing a favor for a friend. She understood that. He didn’t get it though. They’d end up with that divorce anyway—they always did—and this time it’d be worse for everyone. The wounds would be fresh. There would be more anger.
And the worst thing of it all? If she couldn’t help Tonya avoid further heartbreak, what was she even doing with her job? Maybe there was something more to the first-case curse than she’d realized.
“Do you two want to talk in my office?” Eli asked, gesturing to the door. “We’re plugging traffic here.”
Sure enough, the kitchen staff was working around their bottleneck, but the trio was clearly in the middle of the action and disrupting flow.
“I don’t think there’s anything to talk about.” She pressed at her eyelids.
Roman said something, but she couldn’t quite hear him.
Eli guided her to his office, and she didn’t have to look to know that Roman was trailing.
Then Roman’s hands were on her shoulders, his thumbs rubbing small circles along her upper back. They were gentle, like she remembered. Like she loved. Like she craved.
“I can’t believe you did this,” Sadie said, too quiet even to her own ears.
“They were meant to be together,” Roman replied. “Just like us.”
“Because you decided.”
“Because they decided, and we decided.”
“And because you drafted your grandmother to meddle in their lives.” He didn’t get it. “It’s going to be so much worse now. You have no idea what they’re going to go through.” The first few weeks would be fine—a short honeymoon period. Then things would start to unravel and the fallout wouldn’t be quick.
“You’ve seriously got to quit involving Babushka.” Eli shook his head. “What the hell are you thinking? Constantly looping her in on this shit?”
What did he mean? “Constantly?”
Eli had that expression he used to get when they were kids and he had said something he wasn’t supposed to say. Spilled the Kool-Aid instead of staying quiet.
“I talked to Jase,” Eli said as though that were an answer.
Sadie didn’t back down. “What did Jase say?”
“Jase says a lot of things. You shouldn’t listen to him,” Roman replied, his tone hard.
Eli shoved his hands in the pockets of his chef jacket. “He said that Roman enlisted Babushka’s help to convince you to give him a shot.”
Sadie knew Babushka was on this mission. She just hadn’t realized that Roman was the commanding officer distributing orders.
