The Favor

“I don’t want a divorce, Vienna.”

“What, you draft up shit like that for fun? Is that what you’re saying? Oh my God, I can’t deal with you right now.”

“I don’t want a divorce. Not now. Not ever. What I want is for you to stay with me. I made that pretty clear.”

I stared at him, at a loss. “Are you high?”

“Why else do you think I got you that fucking cat?”

“Because she’s all you can give me.”

“That’s what you think?” He exhaled heavily. “Jesus, Vienna. I made the decision that night in New York that I was keeping you. I could tell the next morning that you hadn’t worked that out for yourself. But I said nothing, because I knew you’d doubt that I was capable of being in a relationship. And I was right to think that, wasn’t I?”

I looked at him blankly. Wait, what?

“I knew I was going to have to show you that it could work; that this was truly what I wanted. I also knew that that might not be enough on its own; that you might balk at staying in a marriage that began as a sham, so I drafted up those divorce papers.” He let out a long breath. “I don’t want a divorce. I just wanted to give you the option. If you only want to be in a marriage that has been real from second one, I’ll sign those bastard papers and then we’ll remarry in whatever way you want.”

I looked up at him, feeling like I’d been dealt a blow to the jaw. “You’re serious?” The question came out in a whisper.

“Do I ever joke?”

“But … you’d lose your trust fund if we divorced now.”

He cursed beneath his breath. “You’re more important to me than a trust fund, Vienna.” He seemed exasperated that I’d ever think differently. “There was another sheet of paper I was going to show you today.” He crossed to the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a document of some sort. Returning to me, he held it out.

I carefully took it from him. It was a letter. A letter he’d received from a hospital. I quickly read it and frowned. “You … you’ve booked an appointment to have your vasectomy reversed?”

“You want kids, don’t you?”

And then the tears fell. They just poured right down my face. There was no holding them back.

Dane softly cursed again and caught my face with his hands. He thumbed away the tears. “This was not how I imagined this conversation would go. I didn’t think you’d be so shocked to hear I wanted you to stay. You heard the things I said to Owen yesterday. How could you then think I’d want a divorce?”

“I thought you were just playing the role of possessive husband.”

He rested his forehead against mine. “No, baby girl. For me, this has been real for a while now. How did you not see that? I took you on dates, I got you that damn cat, I sleep in the same room as you.”

“But never in your room. I thought that meant you were making it clear that it was just sex.”

He lifted his head, frowning. “You love the room I chose for you, so why would I ask you to move? If you want us to move into the master bedroom, we can. But I don’t think of it as my bedroom anymore. I go in there to dress—that’s it. It’s more like an oversized closet.”

I took a shaky breath, hoping to center myself and stop the tears from falling. Thinking back, the signs that he wanted the marriage to be real were all there—I just hadn’t read them right. Or maybe I’d been too scared to let myself believe they were signs of any sort, too scared to let myself hope.

Even now, despite how blunt and straightforward he was being, I found it hard to process that he was offering me the very thing I wanted most. Which was, quite simply, him. It didn’t matter to me that I married him as part of a deal we made, because it was that deal that brought us together. I doubted we’d have found our way to each other without it.

I licked my lips. “You’re certain you want this marriage to be real?” I needed to know he wouldn’t change his mind at a later date. It would absolutely crush me.

His eyes hardened. “It is real. You are my wife in every way that matters. If you need me to sign those papers and remarry you, though, I’ll do it. But let me be clear on something. If we divorce, it won’t dissolve anything between us—it’s just paperwork. You won’t go back to being Vienna Stratton. You won’t stop wearing my rings. You won’t move out of this house. Nothing will change. It’ll just mean we’ll have the ceremony all over again.”