Page 145 of Carnal Wagers

“I minded it. I just had better things to do because I never was the spoiled little rich girl you imagined,” I deadpanned back. “You might be happy living a life empty of anyone, but I’m not.”

“Happy?” He scoffed.

His hands itched at his sides, probably with a need to snap my neck or finish the job Brody started. I half expected him to try.

We finally made it to the brunette named Molly, who handed us our equipment with a strained smile. We made quick work of suiting up in the jumpsuits and harnesses. The slow demise of our relationship was reflected in every ragged jerk of our harness straps.

“I know it’s hard for your cynical heart to believe, but I was never going to accept being ignored for the rest of my life. You don’t know what that’s like. You never understood what it felt like to be abandoned.”

“That’s what this was about? A sick, twisted form of vengeance?”

His fingers wrapped around a strand of hair that had escaped my ponytail and tucked it behind my ear and into the neck gaiter with encroaching slowness. The action was adoring in a way his voice, words, and the tension in his jaw weren’t. The feel of his fingers tingled against my skin long after he pulled away.

“You need the validation of your self-importance that much, sweetheart?”

And there he went and ruined it. My teeth grated back and forth.

“No, what I want is a happily ever after, and you never would have given me that.”

“You so sure about that?”

“After today? With you so quick to snap away any chance at the first sign of a struggle?” I stepped out of his reach and out of the hold he had on my emotions. “What else am I supposed to think? Tell me I’m wrong.” I gestured between us. “Tell me you’re not ending us all because of a name. Prove to me your love is not paper-thin.”

Why couldn’t he see that a name didn’t define who I was as a person?

After a few more security checks, Molly and the instructor escorted us outside to a single-engine, turboprop airplane under a chilly breeze and the whistling drone of the engine. The videographer captured on film the scowl on Cillian’s face and my hollow gaze.

I tramped up into the aircraft first and shuffled over to the bench opposite the door.

“The irony galls me,” Cillian said over the engine’s hum.

He held up the mysterious brown envelope, thick with documents, the flap open, and tossed it at me. The packet landed on the blanketed bed of the plane with a clap, and I stared at the worn edges of the kraft paper and the dangling end of the string tie closure on the flap. A stack of papers glided half out.

“You wanted these for years. Congrats. They’re signed. You’re a fecking free woman.”

Dumbstruck, I stared down at the papers, unable to muster even the smallest word in rebuttal.

“What…”

“Divorce papers.”

I recoiled as if he’d slapped me.

That envelope stared back at me, and all my fight drained away. I’d won my bet with Maeve. I had what I’d come to the States for, and yet my heart bled out under the weight of those papers.

The first few pages flapped and skidded further out. I reached out a shaky hand just as two pages drifted in a swirl toward the plane’s entrance. Cillian caught them, his stare dark and sinister, nothing of the man I’d gotten to know and love in them. It really was over. His threat came back, and for the first time, I wondered if he really had sabotaged the parachutes.

He scrunched the errant pages into a ball and dropped them on my lap.

“Don’t worry. I signed another copy two days ago and shipped it to your home address in Lyon.”

I flinched from the force of the stake he impaled through my heart. Tiny shards broke off and tore my veins open from the inside out. He was bleeding me out. Death or divorce, both results were the same.

Oh, this hurt. At the first sign of hardship, I got tossed aside. Story of my life. Never worth safekeeping. Never worth treasuring. So much for love when one little thing could so easily destroy it. Maybe it was better this way. I could go back to my original plan and find someone better…if I survived this. Better than what Cillian had shown me? Was that possible? With him, I learned what it was like to be cherished and adored, and that was worse than never having felt it at all.

Or maybe I should give up on love altogether. That was better than finding someone new who would make me feel seen, who listened, who made me feel safe, only to take it all away over one little, insignificant detail. I didn’t need a man. Just myself. I could love myself enough to overcome anything. I’d been doing it this long, after all.

Nobody dared to speak as the plane took off. Not that we’d hear much over the whir of the engine and the drone of the wind. My ears clogged during the ascent, and in a daze, I pushed the crumpled wads of paper back into the envelope. The plane climbed and climbed. It never seemed to end.