Page 35 of Dearly Unbeloved (Spicy in Seattle #3)

SIERRA

P.S. I have our marriage certificate.

T he lawyer’s office handling my grandparents’ estate is a far cry from Michaelson and Hicks.

I spend more time around lawyers than most people, but I’m itching to get out of the stuffy office the second I step inside.

Even the smell is cloying, like a fancy perfume with a ridiculous price tag that makes you grit your teeth and say, “That’s interesting,” when someone asks what you think.

I never met my mom’s parents, but they lived just outside of Seattle and would have had their pick of firms when setting up their estate. Their choice of lawyer says a lot about them—this whole inheritance situation says a lot about them .

The process is relatively straightforward, at least. It’s a lot of listening to the lawyer drone on about terms, a lot of pretending to read documents (that Cal already checked over for me), and a lot of signing.

Cal gave me the day off, but it’s not all that different from being in the office.

Except I do actually read shit there. He offered to come with us, for moral support more than anything, but this felt like something Rose and I should do, just the two of us.

The lawyer hands us off to his assistant after advising that everything looks in order, but they’ll be double-checking before making the transfer.

By this time next week, I’ll have more money to my name than I know what to do with.

Half of it will go to Kyo, and Cal helped me set up an appointment with his financial advisor because I have no idea what I’m doing.

For the most part, I like my life, and, as far as I’m concerned, nothing has to change alongside my net worth.

Not nothing , I think, as Rose and I step into the elevator with the lawyer’s assistant.

We still have a couple of weeks until Rose finds out about her promotion, but when she gets the job—and she will get the job—everything is going to change.

We’ll sign the papers we had drawn up months ago, which have been sitting gathering dust in her desk drawer.

I’ll move out and stop attending family dinners.

Jazz probably won’t talk to me outside of work anymore, and I’ll have to start over, pretending I want to make new friends and inevitably giving up when people get too close.

And Rose… Rose will move on. She’ll meet someone new, get closer to her siblings, and thrive. And I’ll be so fucking proud of her, even if I’m not there to see it.

Rose twines her fingers with mine, drawing me back into a conversation I didn’t realize was happening. I jump at her touch. She’s barely looked at me since we woke up in each other’s arms this morning, and she certainly hasn’t touched me.

“You have to take yourselves on a honeymoon now,” the lawyer’s assistant says as we descend.

The elevator is glass-fronted, facing dreary Downtown Seattle. Raindrops stream down the glass, and heavy clouds sit low in the sky, casting everything in blue. “Definitely,” I agree. “Maybe somewhere sunny.”

The assistant laughs, shaking her head at the view. “It’s been endless lately. Sunny sounds nice. Any ideas where you might go?”

“Hmm…” I wrack my brain, but Rose answers before I can think of anywhere.

“Japan. I want to see where Sierra’s family came from.”

The assistant gushes about a trip her sister took to Tokyo a couple of years ago, but I barely hear her.

I want to take Rose to Japan. I want to show her where my family’s from and tell her all about my grandparents.

I want to take her back to Toronto, show her around my old neighborhood, introduce her to my aunts and uncles, and take her to my grandparents’ old furniture store. I want to share my family with her.

I don’t want to give any of this up. I don’t want to miss seeing her opening up to her siblings. I don’t want to miss family dinners. I don’t want to miss Rose meeting Jazz and Liam’s baby for the first time. I want to see her flourish as an aunt, and I want to be Aunt Sierra .

But those aren’t my things to want. That’s not what Rose and I agreed on. And even if, by some miracle, she wanted those things with me, I wouldn’t know how to let myself have them. I have no idea how to stay.

“Hey.” Rose squeezes my hand hard, and I blink. “You okay? You’ve been staring blankly at me for like two minutes.”

I look around, realizing we’re standing at the door, and the assistant is already waiting for the elevator again.

“Shit, sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night.

I think I spent too much time napping with the buns yesterday.

” It’s not a lie, just not the whole truth.

Neither Rose nor I made any move toward either of our beds last night.

We cuddled before dinner, ordered takeout, then fell asleep wrapped around each other on the couch.

Or Rose did, anyway. I stayed awake for hours, just watching her sleep, listening to her breathe, and memorizing every freckle on her skin.

Until she woke up and jumped out of my arms, taking off like she couldn’t wait to get away from me.

Rose reaches a hand out, as if she’s going to touch my face, then lets it fall between us. I look down, watching it dangle by her side, the diamond on her finger twinkling as the overhead lights hit it.

“We should get home so you can have a rest, then,” she says, folding her arms across her chest, like she’s not quite sure what to do with them suddenly.

“I figured you’d want to go back to the lab for a couple of hours.”

Rose shakes her head. “I took a half day. I wasn’t sure how long this would take or how stressed you’d be about it, so I wanted to be there in case…” She trails off, looking outside the glass door before finishing. “In case you needed me.”

Fuck, she’s making this so hard.

“Let’s go out,” I say, before I can think about it, and Rose squints at me, like it’s a foreign concept to her. It kind of is, I guess.

“Out?”

“Yeah. We have the whole night to ourselves, and we’re already here. Let’s get dinner and… I don’t know, we could see a movie or something?”

It’s not a date. Sure, it sounds suspiciously like one, but asking my wife on a date a week or so before we plan on getting divorced would be unhinged behavior.

“Um…” Rose chews her lip, and I brace myself, ready for her to decline the invitation. She’s kept me at arm’s length all day, so I can’t imagine she wants to spend the night out in the city with me. I should’ve just taken her up on going home and taking a bath, leaving her to do her own thing.

“We’re near that Italian place that Liam and Maggie like. You know the one that shows obscure foreign movies with really out-of-sync subtitles? We could go there.”

I swear I breathe out all the air in my body, rushing to say yes. “That sounds perfect. Let’s do that.”

It’s an awful idea, spending more time together when I already know how hard it’s going to be to walk away, but that doesn’t stop me from holding the door open for her.

And when Rose accidentally bumps my shoulder as we walk down the street, it doesn’t stop me from threading my fingers through hers and holding her hand.