“ ‘Real property’ includes permanent structures, like houses.” His plaster cast pointed at the wordreal.
Real.Real.Real. She repeated it in her head until it became a foreign sound to her, devoid of all meaning.
Mark finally looked up from the document, pity in his eyes. Lainey knew that whatever he said next would send her world crashing down around her.
“The house—the land, everything on it—you signed it all over to him.”
Chapter 22
You’re My Wife
Lainey ripped openthe car door before Bree could pull to a stop. Elliot was in front of the window, working on his laptop at the dining table.
“Laine, take a beat. Let him explain,” Bree called, but Lainey was already seeing red.
“Stay in the car, Bree,” she shouted.
The entire drive, she’d racked her brain, turning over every alternative explanation aside from the most obvious one.
He wouldn’t do that, she’d silently repeated over and over, like she could will it to be true.Elliot’s not like that.Elliot cares about me.
But did he? In the beginning, he certainly hadn’t.
It was a good plan. She had to give it to him. He knew she had a chronic illness and exactly how expensive her medications were. Health insurance had been the perfect carrot to dangle in front of her. She’d hardly debated his proposal. She’d been too distracted by the prospect of a life without pain. She would’ve signed anything. She was the perfect mark.
A wave of grief hammered through her body as she musteredevery ounce of courage to pull open the door and face the man she married.
“How’d it go with the lawyer? Any attempts on his life?” he asked, his voice light. There was a moment, right before he looked up from his laptop, in which a smile hinted at his lips. A moment when the prospect of seeing her was good news. As soon as her eyes slammed into his, the smile disappeared into his face like a ripple in a pond. Her anger was physical.
“My visit with the lawyer was…illuminating.”
“Oh?” His question came out like a tiptoe over thin ice.
“Yeah.”
She drummed her fingers on the top rail of the chair across from him. She felt herself curling into a protective stance, one that was completely unaffected by Elliot Hodges. It was safe and warm and a total fabrication.
“Do you know what an ‘original plat’ is?”
He swallowed. He at least had the decency to look shamefaced.
“Because I didn’t. Though you probably figured that, since I willingly signed the prenup in the first place.” She kept her voice steely as her heart shook against her ribs. “God, you must’ve been so nervous before the wedding, wondering if I’d figure it out. The whole drive here I was trying to remember what reason you’d given for why the marriage was so urgent. I think you told me I’d have to wait an extra month for insurance coverage. Is that right?”
“That was true,” he blurted. “It had nothing to do with the prenup.” The chair squealed against the floor with his sudden movement. He was up and over to her side of the table, freezing before closing the distance to give her a wide berth.
“You really surprised me when you proposed we defraudyour insurance company. It seemed so out of character for someone so law-abiding, but now, I see the brilliance of it. You weren’t running a scamwithme, you were running oneonme.” She threw the envelope to the table with a rhythmic clap. The documents escaped from the opening, fanning out into a mess of white paper and black type.
He put his hands up, as though taming a wild animal. “Lainey, I swear, I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that—”
“Oh, you wouldn’t?” Lainey asked, her voice ice cold as her insides burned hot. “So your lawyer added the provision without your knowledge?”
“N-no,” he stammered. “I told him to add it, but it wasn’t like that. I was never planning to use it.”
“If you weren’t planning to use it, why would you add it?”
He pinched his eyes shut, like the movement might pause time, but it kept moving. The silence kept building. Her anger squeezed at her insides like a juicer until suddenly her rage sprayed in every direction and she was yelling “Why? Why? Why?” over and over until he finally shouted back, “I don’t know! I don’t know. I thought you had something else planned!”
His fingers gripped the bridge of his nose, bumping his glasses nearly off his face as he struggled to breathe. Even through hazy vision, she felt the impulse to fix it. To straighten his frames and smooth his shirt. To put the man she loved back together again.
