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Lachlan brought our plates over first, setting them down on my cluttered coffee table. Then he brought me a hot cup of coffee—the only steady thing I’d been able to consume all week—and handed it to me. My hands poked out of the blanket just enough to cup the handle.
He sat down on the coffee table, his knees bracketing mine. Gold-brown eyes regarded me with a touch of amusement under his tilted eyebrows. “So. You’ve been spending this whole week figuring out a way to gut your gutless ex-husband?”
I sipped the coffee, and my eyes fluttered with satisfaction. Perfectly sweet with just the right amount of creamer and piping hot. Everything he did was a dream. “Actually,” I said slowly, gathering my thoughts. “It was less about him and more about… you.”
Lachlan tipped his head to the side in silent question.
I traced a finger around the rim of my mug. “When Jason told me he was going to ruin your life if I didn’t walk away from you, I was pissed, actually. I mean, I went between hopeless and pissed, but mostly, I was furious. And I realized, it wasn’t fair to you.”
He watched me silently. He’d done that a lot since he’d done the whole breaking and entering bit this morning. I didn’t mind gazing at his David-the-sculpture-worthy features, and his eyes were warm like hot apple cider in a way that reminded me of a cozy fall afternoon. But he had a way of being unnerving, too. It was like he saw the parts of me I wished didn’t exist in the first place.
I forged onward anyway. “It was my fault your brother was even in the line of fire. My fault because I hadn’t found a way to stand up to him, yet. And I realized I could. I really could if I wanted to. But I needed to find the right way to make him back off.” I scrunched my face, not sure I wanted to admit the rest.
Lachlan pinched my cheeks together with one hand. “Hey, burrito. I literally see when you duck down behind that mental wall of yours.”
I smiled against his fingers. “Yeah?”
He adjusted his hold to my chin. “Yeah.”
Gathering my courage, I admitted, “I wanted to be… good for you? Ready? I don’t know. I wanted to be free. If I was free, then even if I had ruined,” I gestured futilely between us, “this. Whatever this was, then, at the very least, I could be clear for something more. Someday. Or, hell, clear for my own sake. I deserve it, too.”
“You do,” he agreed solemnly.
“I’m sorry I put your career in jeopardy,” I said, looking down at my coffee again. “I couldn’t tell you or you’d try to fix it. You deserve better than that.”
He made a growling noise, like he’d died on level ninety-nine out of one hundred of a video game. I blinked up at him in surprise. “You’re mad?”
“Yes, I’m mad,” he gritted out. But his features contradicted that because he was drinking me in with an expression that held only softness. “Youshouldtell me things, Laurel. If you really want this to be fair, then you should be honest, too.”
I shrugged, scrunching my nose to one side. “Yeah, but I fixed it. He won’t bother you once I show him what I found.”
He laughed, low and ending on a growl of frustration. “I could just,” he mimicked wringing out a rag. Or my neck. “If you’d told me that he had threatened you, then we could have helped each other.”
I felt my brow crease.
“I already knew, burrito brains. He threatened me days before he even let you in on it.”
My mouth popped open. “No.”
“Yes. And as brilliant as that find is,” he said, gesturing to the file on his left, “Remington and I have a plan, too. Either way, he’s pretty fucked, but if we’d workedtogether,” he emphasized. “Well, who knows? At the very least, we wouldn’t have suffered in silence all week.”
I fought a smile. “You suffered?”
“The Seven Circles of Hell have nothing on ‘Lachlan trying to ignore Laurel for a week,’” he admitted grimly. “I was trying to give you space.”
“I did need space,” I admitted. “I got a pro bono lawyer, and she was really helpful in piecing all of this together. And she thinks we can amend the custody agreement without any fuss because he’s in a different country.”
“Good,” Lachlan said easily, and sipped his black coffee.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You don’t seem surprised that I found a lawyer.”
“You’re very capable.” He slurped his coffee again, loudly. I cinched my eyes together until his image blurred. Lachlan sighed. “Okay, fine, Brady is the last name of my research partner.”
“I knew it!” I hissed, standing with indignation. “Iknewyou were behind that.”
“I didn’tpayfor a lawyer, though,” he said innocently.
“Lachlan Cade,” I accused.
