“You should come back to my apartment,” I coaxed her. “I know it seems like a lot but think about this. You don’t want to turn this down. Think of everything you could do with the money, for Jolene, for your career.”
I should have gotten her to sign a contract with all the money I’d already put out, but I couldn’t do it. Fuck my life if it blew up in my face again, but I couldn’t.
She looked over her shoulder at the condo and winced as though remembering how tiny it was in there, remembering all the space she had in my apartment. I wanted her back there, filling the space. I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was that made me want to keep her around, but it was there and undeniable, and I never found myself lacking what I wanted.
“I need you to be the buffer between me and my dad’s new wife,” I went on, pushing hard, knowing I was close to getting what I wanted so badly. “I need someone there to make sure I can actually remember her name. She likes you better than me, remember?”
“You’re a total asshole, you know that?” She rounded on me again, but there was defeat in her voice. She knew how this was going to go, just the same way I did. I grinned.
“Sure, I do,” I replied. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to walk away from you just like that. We’re married, remember?”
“Yeah, how could I forget?” She sighed heavily. She was wavering hard. It would only take a tiny push to get her over the edge and back to my place where we could figure things out more definitively once and for all.
“Come home,” I implored her, and I reached out to take her hand. It was a soft touch, nothing sexual, but I still felt this wave of—was it relief? Desire? Attraction? Affection? Some mix of all the above? Whatever it was, it washed over me suddenly and unarguably, and I knew she felt it too. I could see it written on her face, the reflection of my feelings in her. She sighed again and then whipped her hand away from mine and took a step toward me.
“All right,” she finally agreed. “I’ll come back with you, but we need to lay down a few ground rules.”
“Anything.” I held my hands up, a punch of triumph in my head. I had done it. I had just landed the hardest deal I’d ever had to work for, and the sense of achievement was impossible to deny.
“No more sex,” she started, and she poked her finger into my chest. “No nothing. No flirting, no touching, no being cute, not when it’s just the two of us. I can put on a show around your family, but that’s it, all right?”
“I get it.” I nodded at once. “Anything else?”
She stepped back and regarded me for a moment, putting the pieces together in her head, figuring out the best way to approach this.
“This is strictly a business deal,” she went on at last. “Nothing more than that. I’ll stay at your place, but I want that bedroom all to myself, and I don’t want you thinking for a second that what happened that night is going to happen again any time soon. Do you get it?”
“Sure.” I cocked my head at her. “I mean, can I just remind you that you were the one who took your clothes off that evening?”
She flushed bright red, and her eyes flashed with annoyance. She glanced away.
“Yeah, I’m very aware of that,” she muttered. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“I’m just trying to say I’m not going to put the moves on you,” I assured her. “And that you were the one who started things last time. Like I said, sex is up to you. Always.”
“And I’m saying I don’t want it anymore,” she replied haughtily, but her neck was still flushed red from my comment. She had to be just playing at being above it all.
“Sure.” I nodded, playing along for now. I had a feeling she might change her mind on that, just like she had done the last time, but I wasn’t going to even think about pushing my luck. “Come on. Let’s get your shit into the car and head up to my nonna’s place.”
“Do we have to go so soon?” She frowned. “I wanted to stop by and see Toby first.”
“You can do that as soon as we’re finished with my family,” I promised. “But we don’t have time to waste. Not a word about anything that’s happened, all right? Just play it cool.”
“Yeah, I get it,” she shot back as she went to her car to start grabbing her stuff from it. “Come on, help me with these groceries. I need to get them out of the back before they go everywhere.”
“Sure thing.” I went to help her, and I felt as calm as I had in what felt like weeks. It had only been a few hours since she’d walked out on me, since she’d changed everything by telling me she loved me. Now, she was coming home, and I couldn’t be happier. I paused for a moment, watching her as she hurriedly shifted her stuff from her car to mine, and grinned. There wasn’t a deal around that I couldn’t pin down. Not even if that deal was Amaya.