“I had my attorney draw up divorce papers,” I said softly, directing my words to the left shoulder seam of Gideon’s jacket. “They’re out in my car. I just need you to sign them.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Parker leaned around Gideon, interjecting himself into our conversation and looking way too disappointed for a guy who’d just learned Gideon was married in the first place. “Are you sure?”
I looked at Gideon, who just shook his head exasperatedly.
“Uh, yeah. Pretty darn sure,” I said.
“But have you considered marriage counseling? Or couples massage? Or… and this is just my personal experience, mind you… but I’ve found living in the same town to be incredibly helpful.” His eyes darted back and forth between us. “Just… don’t do anything hasty.”
Hasty. Of all the things we’d ever done…
I snorted, and Gideon’s darkly amused gaze crashed into mine for half a second of connection before we remembered we weren’t supposed to feel that way anymore.
I stared at the ground.
“Liam, you seem like a really nice guy,” Parker enthused. “And—”
“Hold up. Based on what?” Gideon demanded, before I could think of a damn thing to say. “The way his ass looks in those jeans? The way he wants to divorce me?”
“No! Just his… hisaura.”
“His aura.”
“Yes! Or… whatever you wanna call it.” Parker was impatient now. “You know what I mean.Youmarried the guy, after all.”
For one second, I’d swear the air between Gideon and me was a living thing, pulsing with all our unspoken words and unrealized potential.
And then it was gone.
“Parker, you recall my thoughts about you getting involved in my dating life?” Gideon said calmly, not quite looking at Parker but not quite looking at me either.
Parker frowned. “Yeah.”
“Then you can imagine how I feel about you interfering in my… mymarriage.” He said it like the word was distasteful.
“But…Gideon,” Parker said, low and urgent. “Magical connection,babe. You said—”
“Isaid, keep your nose out of my business, Parks.” Gideon’s voice was scary-serious and his eyes were narrowed to slits. “That’s what I fuckingsaid.”
Parker held up his hands in surrender and threw himself into a chair at a nearby table across from an older gentleman.
Gideon turned his head back to look at me, and I could almost swear he was cataloging my features the same way I’d done to him earlier.
“Why now?”
I licked my lips thinking of Hazel, and the riot act my attorney had read me when I’d gone to put a trust in place for her last month and disclosed the minute, inconsequential little detail of my legally binding marriage.
I thought about how lonely I sometimes felt, how unmoored.
I thought briefly of Scott and the fledgling friendship between us, and how maybe that could turn into something uncomplicated that would be, if not wild and crazy and passionate, at least something good enough.
A happy medium was stillhappy, right?
But I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I shrugged and said, “It’s five years this month. It’s been long enough.”
The tendons in Gideon’s neck stood out for a second before he said, “And you had to hand-deliver these papers? Trekking your ass all the way from… Where are you living now?”
“Uh, still Boston,” I whispered, pressing a hand to my stomach. “Just a different area. South of the city.”