Page 7 of The Impact (Parachutes #3)
The Approach
Tahli
“I apologize again. We’ve submitted another request for the repair of the air conditioning. It comes on, then it shuts off. We’ll try to speed this up to get you guys out of here.”
Tahli didn’t care. Didn’t care about the faulty air conditioning or the rambling court employee. It was the first official day of spring, and quite warm out. Inside of the conference room, three times muggier. Yet, she was shivering. Couldn’t bring her eyes to cross the table.
Was she even at this table?
In her mind, Tahli was still in Stage Left steakhouse with Dave Hollister singing underneath Vin’s pleas. Even if it was over a month later.
She gulped, focusing on her breathing. Felt her heart slow from racing. Wondered if it was too slow. Wondered if she was taunting death.
“Yes, hopefully, we can finally reach middle ground and receive Mr. Hayes’ precious signature,” Tahli’s lawyer quipped.
“Forgive me. I thought it was your client who’s been MIA the past two weeks?” Vin’s lawyer rebutted.
“She needed a mental break. But let’s not act like your client hasn’t been intentionally holding up proceedings–”
“Okay, can we regroup?” The court-appointed mediator refereed. “Moving on to the Long Branch beachfront property. Being that this is a predominantly rental property that according to Mrs. Hayes–”
“Hall.” Tahli corrected in a hushed voice, avoiding Vin’s brooding gaze that felt like a stadium of eyeballs. It was only the mediator, Vin and Tahli, along with their attorneys. One big table and a mountain of quiet tension.
“Right. Ms. Hall and her attorney stated that this was a family vacation property used for only two weeks a year, but was otherwise considered an asset. She agrees to a buyout of her portion of the property. Does that work for you, Mr. Hayes?”
Tahli shut her eyes. This was awful. Divorces were painted much prettier in movies. Quick and blithe signatures, strippers and divorce parties. Champagne. There was no champagne.
She fiddled with her fingers, waiting with everyone else for Vin to answer. No shock when he didn’t.
“My client has no objection.” Vin’s lawyer spoke for him. She was a short Jewish woman with poodle hair. Quite the opposite of Tahli’s curvy, black stallion, lady boss of an attorney who was a friend of her father’s.
“In the case of alimony, my client is offering 50% more than customary. The standard alimony stipulations will be in place–”
“My client will forfeit the monthly alimony stipend if the child support remains. She doesn’t want to be confined to the stipulations.”
Tahli knew Vin was smart enough to see through her lawyer’s language.
Vin would offer a huge chunk of monthly money under the condition that she didn’t remarry or cohabitate with anyone for the length of it, running concurrently with child support.
Basically, Tahli couldn’t live with or marry another man for the next 12 years or more.
Until Terran was an adult or out of college.
“Instead, she will request a reduced lump sum upfront, taken from the joint savings account.”
Tahli couldn’t help it. She glanced up, watching as Vin’s lawyer leaned in and whispered to him.
She wasn’t a pretty woman. Tahli would’ve never looked at her twice.
But now, with Vin in the world unconnected to her, he was free to fuck whoever.
Would it matter how pretty they were? Maybe he would just want to fuck his little Jewish lawyer.
Maybe he would just want to see what that was like as a single man.
“We’ll circle back to that. Moving on to the marital residence. If you can, turn to page seven. Ms. Hall suggests selling the property and splitting the equity–”
“My client is not willing to sell the marital residence. This is where his children were born and raised. If Miss Hall would like to change primary residences, Mr. Hayes will remain in the residence–”
“And who exactly will be funding her new residence?” Tahli’s lawyer bucked up.
“Tahli.”
Her eyes shot up in an instinct with her gasp.
The call of her name in that voice was something her ears had trained to respond to for the past 16 years.
Tahli hadn’t looked at Vin – really looked at him – since Valentine’s Day.
Since he’d bled himself dry in a final attempt at forgiveness in that empty steakhouse.
“Mrs. Steinberg. Please tell your client to refrain from addressing my client directly.”
“Dalvin...” Poodle’s pale hand rested on top of his tattooed one in warning.
“You really fucking with this, Tahli?”
Her eyes rose from that hand. Met those eyes that used to be her hiding place. Deaths and health scares, parenting problems and work ordeals, those eyes were always waiting for her at the end of the day.
“Mr. Hayes,” the mediator warned.
“Is this what you really want, Tahli? Be honest with me. Tell me, baby love. Because…I’m willing to do anything . Like, if it’s even a fucking fragment of a chance, I’m a take it. But look in my eyes and tell me that this is real, Tahli. This is really happening.”
She stared at him. Captively. Her baby. His onyx irises, with so much adoration reserved for her, now packed with a desperate pain. It stung to see him this way. Because this time last year, nobody could tell her shit about Dalvin Hayes.
“This is really happening, Tahli?” Vin begged.
“This is what you want? Because I don’t .
I’m fucking…” He reached for her hand and Tahli yanked it from the table.
She watched his slow blinks process it. “I’m fucking dying, Tahli.
I don’t want to be divorced. I want to be with you.
I wanna…I wanna be with you until I fucking die, and I…
I wanna wake up to my kids every day,” Vin sniffed, waterlogged eyes pleading into hers.
“But is this…?” His face pruned at whatever he was considering as if he was bracing for the impossible. “Is this what you really want?”
A lengthy silence. An uncomfortable clearing of her lawyer’s throat–the kind of sound that spoke volumes. My invoice still stands even if you don’t get divorced today, Mrs. Hayes, Hall, or whatever the fuck you want to be.
Everyone seemed to wait for her answer. Her throat-clearing lawyer. Vin’s lawyer, toying with her pale fingers. Vin and his searing gaze.
Raging waters flooded her mind–no waves of direction. Just white rapids violently crashing against her skull, washing away her brain matter.
“No.” His eyes expanded to her delicate one-worded reply. “I… I don’t want this.”
She watched relief soften his features, hating every minute of it. Not because she had alleviated him. After the restaurant and the Dave Hollister charade, Vin had held no punches in professing his love and desires. She was moving past the anger phase of his betrayal.
No, she hated to witness his hope turnover to defeat from her next words.
“But it is what I’m going to do,” sorrow quavered Tahli’s voice.
“Because unlike you, Dalvin, I know that there are things bigger than what I want. I know that I can’t go around doing whatever I want and there not be consequences.
That I can’t fuck somebody in the middle of an argument, make a baby, hide a baby, and think life can just go on.
That as much as I want to move past this and keep our family – and I do…
I really do want that,” Tahli nodded, aware of everyone’s focus on her words, especially Vin.
“I know the consequence would be…” her eyes drifted to a rest on the glossy wood of the table before finding his again, “agonizing. Moving on with you would be torture, Dalvin. Every time I looked at you, I would…” Tahli couldn’t even finish.
She only shook her head. The thought of her home pregnant with their son, while Vin was fucking gorgeous, perfect-bodied Sophie on her sofa…
Sophie, who he shared a history and dead baby with.
Images from the truth she’d begged him for replayed in her mind—truth he’d finally told, even if he’d kept the passion out of his words. And twelve years of lies.
“I used to look at you and feel so free. I used to feel safe , baby,” she admitted, watching his eyes glaze at her trembling lips. The vulnerable Tahli he’d once owned. The only man to unlock that part of her. She was still waiting for him to blink.
“Now... Every time I look at you, I can’t help but remember how happy you made me all these years and how good you were to me. Then I wonder if that was only the case because you were living this whole other fucking life I knew nothing about.”
“Tahli–” her lawyer tried to subdue her rising anger, but Tahli lifted a trembling hand.
“And you were just doing your thing, huh?” Tahli laughed mockingly. “Playing your part. That’s what I think now. Playing your part here, playing it there. Treating me so good because you were so scared of getting caught. Weighed down with guilt. It was all an act to you.”
“I was good to you because your happiness was, is, and will always be my biggest priority, Tahli.”
“Right,” she uttered, forehead frowning. “But that’s the thing about lies, Dalvin. Once they come out, they poison the truth. All of our memories are tainted. I’ll never believe any of them. I’ll never trust my own fucking memories. I’ll never trust you .”
That traveled his gaze off to the same table she had studied. Until she concluded with, “So, yeah…I’m fucking with it. I love you, baby. But I owe it to myself to love me more. Don’t think that doesn’t kill me to say, Vin, because of course what the fuck am I gonna do without you?”
She watched him swallow that down.