Page 28 of The Marriage Blunder

I let the question settle. “Yes.”

“Then bring him to dinner. Kyue will want to meet him.”

I was caught off guard, and for a second, I forgot how to answer. “You’re not going to ask what he does? Or if he fits the profile?”

Lucas laughed, low and real. “I’ve met you, Ken. If he made it through the first twenty-four hours, he’s probably made of steel.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Kyue and you should come to the penthouse for dinner instead. Jude hasn’t seen it yet.”

There was a bit of amusement in Lucas’s voice as he stated, “We’ll be there.”

There was a knock at his door, then the muffled voice of his own assistant. He covered the receiver, murmured a quick answer, then came back to the call.

“Look,” he said, “you want to keep the marriage, keep it. You want to blow it up, blow it up. But don’t waste my time pretending you haven’t already made the decision.”

“I haven’t told him yet,” I admitted.

“Tell him.” There was a warmth in his voice, a kind of tough kindness that made the order sound like a favor.

“You think it’ll work?” I asked.

“I think if you want it to, it will.”

I exhaled, slow. “Thanks.”

He laughed. “Just don’t bring up the wedding photos.”

I promised nothing. We hung up.

The city outside looked different now, the lights a little less hostile, the future a little less uncertain. I finished my drink, then set the glass down and rolled the wedding ring around my finger, feeling the groove it had already worn into the skin.

Lucas was right, of course. I’d made my choice.

Now all that remained was to make it real.

I stood at the window, watched the taxis trace the edges of the island, and for the first time in a long time, I believed in the possibility of a story with no clean exit, only forward motion.

Jude Thomas was my disaster, and I was ready to let it burn.

That night, the penthouse was quiet enough to hear the pulse in my own ears. I lay in bed, staring at the white ceiling, tracing the pattern of shadows the city lights threw across the molding. The sheets were cool, the air set three degrees colder than necessary, a force of habit I never questioned until now.

I counted the hours. Forty-eight since Vegas. Thirty since the jet bridge. Less than twelve since I’d decided to keep him.

I replayed everything. Not in fragments, but in one unedited reel. The exact shape of his laugh in the club, half-buried in the thump of the music. The shock on his face when the first kiss landed, then the way he melted into it, as if he’d been waiting years for permission to stop pretending.

The elevator ride: the panic, the fumbling, the glasses knocked askew and set right again, the sense that we were breaking every rule that had ever mattered and finding we didn’t care.

The suite, his body, soft in the way a real person was, real in a way I hadn’t let myself want since I was a kid.

The morning after, when he woke up next to me, hair in his eyes and a look on his face like the world had ended, but he was glad to have watched it burn.

The phone calls, the text chain, the way even his silences were alive with intention.

I catalogued each detail, the way I did with every asset, every risk, every potential disaster. I turned each memory over, looking for flaws, and found none.

I wanted him.