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“A divorce?” I said, my voice rising despite my best efforts. “When did Ievergive you the idea that I wanted a divorce?I’mnot the one who blew up the fucking marriage!I didn’t even realize anything was seriously wrong!”
The last sentence emerged as a straight-up shriek. I realized that fact at the same moment I realized I was shaking—wracking, full-body tremors that made me feel like I might pass out. Possibly, I’d been suppressing a few more feelings around this subject than I’d realized.
Nat half-rose from his seat, but not to get away from me. Instead, he reached toward me with an abortive movement, as though my outpouring of almost hysterical distress caused him physical pain. He froze, clearly unsure if he was allowed to touch me.
Perversely, the urge to throw myself into that familiar embrace and break down sobbing rushed over me like a tidal wave. Appalled at myself, I shoved my chair back from the table. Nat’s suspended hand fell to rest palm-down on the tabletop. He slumped back in his seat, defeated.
I was breathing hard; ugly gasps that barely seemed to fill my lungs. We stayed in this wary standoff for what felt like centuries.
“We don’t have to,” Nat said, at length. “I just wanted you to know that the option is there... and it will continue to be there, should you change your mind later.”
A terrible thought came to me. “Did you find someone else? Is that why you’re bringing this up now?”
It was the height of hypocrisy, and I knew it. I just didn’tcare.
Nat let out a harsh breath that might’ve been the distant relative of a self-deprecating laugh. “No, nothing like that, believe me. The sad truth is, I’ve had a grand total of one hookup partner. It was fairly early on. Nothing recent.” He hesitated, swallowing. “And I don’t like some of the things I learned about myself after it happened.”
I blinked at him, my chest still heaving. “You... what?”
He gave a tiny, sheepish shrug. “It’s true. You found yourself a house full of rich alphas who absolutely dote on you. I met a stranger in a hotel room three times, and I’ve spent pretty much every spare moment since then reevaluating my life choices, now that it’s too late to do anything about them.”
My mouth opened, but I didn’t know what to say. I’d assumed Nat had been fucking random women more or less non-stop since demanding the open marriage. He was freakinggorgeous—not to mentionripped, thanks to his gym addiction. He was well-spoken, polite, attentive...
“Are you lying to me?” I asked, bewildered.
The wry, open expression on his face as he shook his head was what finally convinced me. It was an expression which clearly conveyed that he could see and appreciate the sick humor inherent in the situation, even if the joke was at his expense.
“Trust me,” he said, irony lacing his tone. “That single damned hookup ended up being a colossal mistake. You don’t even know the half of it.”
I struggled to rearrange my assumptions about the last several weeks in light of this new revelation. It was too much, though. I needed time to process it.
My bout of enraged hysteria had subsided, at least—leaving me feeling shaky and wrung out. I licked my lips, trying to drag my focus back to what mattered.
“Okay,” I said. “Look. As I’m sure I’ve just demonstrated, I have some strong feelings about what happened between us. But trying to finalize a divorce right now would be a financial nightmare. Divorces are expensive, and we can’t affordexpensivewhen we’re trying to drag the restaurant back from the brink.”
Nat looked wary, but after a moment his shoulders relaxed a bit. “It would be complicated, it’s true,” he allowed. “The debt is under the name of the LLC, but it’s secured by our personal assets, and anyway, we’re both listed as officers of the company.”
I nodded, relieved for an excuse to kick this particular can of roaches down the road. “Exactly. Why rock the boat if we don’t have to?”
That same relief was visible in the lines of Nat’s spine. “All right. I just wanted you to know that if you decide to abandon ship, I’ll happily hop into a dinghy and disappear without making a fuss.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I get it.”
From there, we awkwardly discussed a schedule for getting the restaurant cleaned and restocked for opening, agreeing to hold off until Nat talked to the local press about running our story.
Afterward, I got in my car and drove back to Ladue on autopilot, trying very hard not to think about Nat fucking astranger in a seedy motel room... the same way I’d fucked Byron in some twisted attempt to get revenge for what Nat had done to our marriage.