“What money?” I asked.
“The pool,” Fitz said reluctantly.
“What pool?”
“The betting pool,” Gabriel admitted.
“About what?”
“About you,” Winnie said, trying not to smile.
I stared at them. “You bet on me?”
“We bet on your marriage,” Nathan clarified. “Specifically, how it would turn out.”
“That’s—”
“Completely normal workplace behavior,” Fitz said. “We bet on everything.”
“What were the bets?”
They all looked at each other.
“Well,” Hayden said slowly, “I bet you’d figure it out eventually. That you’d realize Athena was good for you and stop fighting it.”
“I bet you’d keep her at arm’s length,” Gabriel said. “Maintain professional distance. Never fully commit.”
“I bet you’d try to ‘fix’ her,” Nathan admitted. “Make her more organized. More conventional.”
“I bet you’d divorce within a month,” Fitz said cheerfully. “No offense.”
“Offense taken.”
“And I,” Quinton said, still grinning, “bet that you’d completely surrender. That you’d stop fighting the chaos and just... let go.”
“And?” I asked.
“And you just admitted you went home and had transformative sex with your wife after your parents were humiliated by your secretly brilliant in-laws,” Quinton said. “While wearing sneakers and showing up seventeen minutes late and not caring about any of it.”
“So?”
“So I win,” Quinton said. “Complete surrender. Called it.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Twelve hundred dollars.”
“TWELVE HUNDRED—”
“We all put in two hundred,” Nathan said defensively. “It was a serious bet.”
“You bettwelve hundred dollarson my marriage?”
“Technically, we bet on your personality transformation,” Fitz said. “The marriage was just the catalyst.”
“That’s not any better.”
“It’s a little better,” Gabriel said.
