He chuckles, low and dark as his lips brush against my ear. “I think I saw a storage room on the way here. C’mon. Let me fuck my gorgeous wife.” He kisses my neck. “It’ll take the edge off.”
I smile, shaking my head. He’s just trying to distractme from my nerves. But then he shifts in his seat and I get a look at the bulge in his immaculate suit pants.
My eyes go wide. “You’re actually serious.”
He winks before discreetly adjusting himself. My gruff, brooding husband who is currently sporting a half-chub in a courthouse we’re in because we’re being accused of marriage fraud, actually winks at me.
He murmurs, “Keep those heels on.”
The door opens. Their lawyer steps out and looks at us without expression. “They’re ready.”
The mediation room is bigger than I expected. A rectangular table, a dozen chairs, a window overlooking a parking lot with a view of the mountains beyond it if you crane your neck. The judge is already seated at the head. He’s a man in his sixties with heavy-framed glasses that do nothing to cushion the impact of his hard, icy eyes.
My parents are on the other side of the table. My father looks like all the oil paintings of our ancestors: austere and grim, certain that the world will be bent to his dominion. My mother sits beside him in her pearls and perfect bun. Her blue eyes flash in surprise at the sight of Slade in his bespoke suit. No doubt she’s thinking he looks respectable for the first time in her eyes.
Celia’s leaning back in her chair, twirling a bottle of water in her hands like she’s waiting for a show to begin. Peter sits at the end, jaw tight, next to our family lawyer, Aldrich, who has a yellow legal pad covered in handwriting out before him.
Slade pulls my chair out before I can reach for it.
After I take a seat, he sits beside me and puts his hand on my knee under the table and leaves it there.
Aldrich opens. The language is full of legalese: fraudulent inducement, misrepresentation, coercion, timeline of events. He lays it out clearly, I’ll give him that. Makes their case soundreasonable. Makes it sound like concerned family stepping in on behalf of their poor, naive daughter.
I hate all of them for it. For making me seem foolish. For making themselves seem like benevolent, loving protectors.
Even if my marriage started out as fake, what they’re spewing here is nothing but a torrent of lies.
Aldrich slides a sheet of paper toward the judge. “Your Honor, we'd also direct the court's attention to a witness statement. The county clerk who processed the marriage license, a Ms. Kaylee Cole, was interviewed as part of our investigation.”
My stomach drops. I'd almost forgotten her. The clerk who looked at that marriage license she stamped and then glared at me like I’d personally stolen something from her.
Aldrich takes a small sip from the glass of water in front of him. “Ms. Cole recounts a specific exchange between the petitioner’s daughter and Mr. Rhodes at the time the license was issued,” he continues, reading from his notes. “She states that Mrs. Rhodes said she could ‘change it back’, referring to her surname, ‘after’ something she did not finish saying. At which point Mr. Rhodes placed a finger over her mouth and told her, and I quote directly, ‘Not here. You don't know who's listening.’”
The judge’s eyebrows rise slightly.
My gut twists inside me.
“Ms. Cole found the interaction suspicious enough to remember it clearly months later,” Aldrich says. “Two people discussing reversing a marriage at the very moment they entered into it. Hushing one another in a government building. We submit this is consistent with a couple who knew the arrangement was temporary.”
I feel sick. Because that did happen. Every word of it.
Slade’s hand tightens on my knee under the table. But when I glance at him, he doesn’t look worried at all.
The judge looks at Slade. “Mr. Rhodes? Do you dispute the clerk’s account?”
“Nope,” Slade says easily. “Happened just like that.”
A ripple of surprise around the table. Aldrich blinks.
“Lila asked if she could change her name back at any point,” Slade goes on. “I told her not to talk about that in the courthouse, because there’s a clerk standing three feet away and eavesdropping. One nursing a grudge from high school. And I didn’t feel like having my private business spread all over Marble Falls.” He leans back. “Turns out I was right to worry. Took her all of a couple months to run her mouth to a lawyer.”
“A grudge,” the judge repeats, adjusting his glasses.
“Small town, Your Honor. People hold grudges longer than a mafioso. See, Kaylee Cole asked me to a dance our sophomore year. I turned her down. She didn’t take it kindly then, and apparently the wound to her pride has festered.” He shrugs. “Maybe ask her how objective she's feeling about my marriage.”
The judge's mouth twitches. He makes a note. “Mr. Rhodes. You have no counsel to represent you?”
“Don’t need it,” he says. “Ain’t gonna pay a man a thousand bucks an hour to tell these people that our marriage is none of their business. I can do that myself. “
