Chapter Twenty-Two
Cate
Okay.
Okay, okay, okay.
Deep breaths, Cate. Deep breaths. You’re not having a heart attack. This is just anxiety. Regular, garden-variety, my-boss-just-told-his-ex-wife-I’m-his-wife anxiety.
Totally normal. Happens all the time.
People go from secret hallway sex to fake marriage every day, right?
RIGHT?
I couldn’t breathe.
The dish towel in my hands had somehow become my only tether to reality, and I was gripping it so hard my knuckles had gone white. Or maybe they’d always been white. Maybe I’d died somewhere between “Don’t talk to my wife like that” and now, and this was just my anxiety-ridden ghost trying to process the afterlife.
Gabriel was staring at me.
His jaw was tight, his shoulders tense, and he had that look—the one that meant he was trying to figure out how to fix something. How to control the situation.
Good luck with that, buddy. You just told a lawyer that I’m your WIFE! A lawyer who is definitely going to investigatethat claim. A lawyer who is going to find out that we are NOT married, and then what? Then WHAT?
“Cate.” Gabriel’s voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that doctors used right before they told you that you need surgery. “Let me explain.”
“Explain?” The word came out as a squeak. “Explain what? That you just committed—what is that, perjury? Fraud? I don’t know the legal term, but I’m pretty sure lying to a lawyer about being married is illegal.”
“I didn’t lie under oath.”
“Oh, well,thatmakes it better!” I was spiraling. I could feel it happening... that familiar sensation of my brain detaching from my body and launching itself into the stratosphere. “We just casually lied to your ex-wife’s attorney. No big deal. Happens every Tuesday.”
“Cate.”
“We’ve been having sex for a week, Gabriel. ONE WEEK. And now I’m yourWIFE?!” My voice was getting higher. Louder. “We haven’t even had the ‘what are we’ conversation! We haven’t talked about being exclusive! We haven’t—” I stopped. Because suddenly, horribly, I realized something. “Oh my God,” I whispered. “Megan.”
Gabriel’s expression shifted. “What about Megan?”
“She’s upstairs. She’s upstairs right now, and her mother just showed up—her mother who abandoned her, and now there’s going to be a custody battle, and we just LIED about being married, and what if, what if this makes things worse for her? What if Tonya uses this against you? What if...”
“Cate.” Gabriel crossed the room in three strides, his hands coming up to grip my shoulders. “Breathe.”
“I can’t breathe! I’m too busy being your FAKE WIFE!”
His mouth twitched. Almost a smile.
Almost.
“Don’t,” I said, pointing the dish towel at him like a weapon. “Don’t you dare smile right now. This is not funny. This is the opposite of funny. This is a disaster. This is—this is like when you’re making a soufflé and you open the oven too early and the whole thing collapses, except instead of a soufflé it’s your ENTIRE LIFE.”
“Are you comparing our situation to a soufflé?”
“YES! Because that’s what my brain does when it’s panicking! It makes food metaphors!” I pulled away from him, pacing. “We’re screwed. We are so, so screwed. That lawyer is going to investigate. He’s going to find out we’re not married. And then what? Then Tonya gets ammunition for the custody battle. Then you look like a liar. Then—”
“Then we get married.”
I stopped pacing, turned around, and stared at him. “I’m sorry,” I intoned. “I think I just had a stroke. Because it sounded like you just said—”
