It always felt like adding insult to injury that in any other circumstance, Rhys would behot.
“I can take it from here,” Rhys tells Hanna in that clipped, arrogant way he has. Like he won’t waste a syllable on talking to anyone who doesn’t merit his five-hundred-dollar-an-hour time.
(My attorney cost one hundred sixty-five dollars an hour, sliding scale. You could probably have predicted who would “win” that divorce before we ever stepped in a conference room. Not that she wasn’t amazing. She was terrific. But. One of Rhys’s suits costs more than her total bill for the entire divorce.)
Money wins.
“I did everything I could, Eden,” Hanna says, her voice unsteady. “I know this can’t be comfortable for you. But I’m hoping since there are only two weeks till the wedding?—”
“I can take it from here, Han,” Rhys grits out.
They engage in a prolonged glaring contest. I’m betting on Hanna, one of the toughest, most unflappable women I’ve ever met—but in the end, she looks away first.
Even his own sister can’t win.
“He’ll do a good job,” she tells me. “My brothers are pains in my ass, but they love me and want what’s best for me, and Rhys will absolutely do what has to be done.”
I’ve definitely seen evidence of that. Ruthless. Relentless. Savage.
“I’ll be in the waiting area if you need me,” she says, ducking her head.
She leaves the door open, but as soon as she’s gone, the office feels—absurdly—smaller. How can a person leaving shrink a room? But it has. Rhys now fills all the available space and takes all the remaining air. My chest tightens.
“Fuck my life,” I blurt.
“You and me both,” he mutters.
“What do you meanyou and me both?” I demand. “You’re the one who took my money and my dog?—”
“I didn’ttake?—”
“You reallocated them to my asshole ex-husband! My dog can’t even come to my wedding because it’s Teller’s turn for custody and he won’t give me visitation!”
He doesn’t try to argue with that. “Point taken,” he says in that crisp dismissive way of his. “So let’s get through this wedding, and in two weeks we’ll never have to see each other again.”
“Isn’t there another way?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Believe me,” he says, “if there were another way, I would not be in this room with you.”
I wince. Even though I was well aware of his feelings toward me, the outright admission stings. I tried, even when we were adversaries, to be kind to him. But I could sense his impatience and contempt in every tight, disciplined line of his body.
I now regret every ounce of decency I showed him.
“I have to plan your wedding, so I’ll plan your wedding,” he says. “Anything else I do screws Hanna.”
“The planning’s basically done,” I say. “If it weren’t, I’d have canceled the contract the instant you walked into the room.”
He doesn’t react to that, not even a flinch. I remember how implacable he always was. Nothing seemed to ruffle his surface, to put even a tiny dent in his absolute, perfect control.
“Today’s meeting was to nail down the last stuff, and then you just have to make sure everything runs smoothly the day of?—”
“Which I’ll do,” he bites out.
“I don’t doubt it,” I say. “I never doubted your competence. Just yoursoul.”
Is that a flinch?
I’m not sure I’ve ever been deliberately unkind to someone. But then no one has ever taken my life down to the studs with utter, ruthless efficiency while also treating me like I barely existed.
