Chapter 22 You’re My Wife
You’re My Wife
Lainey ripped open the 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 mustered every 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 defraud your 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 scam with me, you were running one on me.
” 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.
“Like what?” she asked. A hard whisper cutting through the quiet.
He paused, and when he spoke, his voice was small. Pitiful. “I’m sure it’s occurred to you that you could sell the place to someone else for a lot more money if you owned the land, too.”
Her mouth filled with acid. “I’d never do that to you.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t then,” he said slowly.
His fingers drove into his hair, pulling at the roots.
“All I knew was that I came to this town and then this gorgeous, brilliant woman took my dream house out from under me without even lifting a finger. And you were always ten steps ahead of me. With the inspector. With the candlesticks.”
Elliot’s words didn’t come close to the way Lainey saw herself. She was always scrambling. Surviving. She’d lived her life on her back foot, desperate to catch a break.
“Back then, I felt like a sitting duck, and I wanted a little leverage. That was all it was. I saw every way this could go wrong, and I wanted a card to play. Just in case this was a manipulation.”
“ ‘This’? You mean us?” She gestured between them. “You think I’m manipulating you?” Her voice wobbled, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she completely fell apart.
“No, Lainey. Of course not.”
“But you did.”
“Didn’t you?” he asked, his voice cracking.
Fear, mistrust, deceit. This was the rotted foundation they were constructed on, and now everything beautiful they’d built together looked unsteady.
They weren’t Forest’s Bridge or even the cabin they’d renovated that was beginning to feel like a home.
They were the waterlogged houses at the edge of the property.
A total teardown. Better lit on fire and sent out to shore.
“God. All of that ‘Let me in, Lainey!’ bullshit. And the sickest part is, I almost did. I almost let myself…” Trust you.
Believe in you. Love you. She’d been so close to surrendering herself to it.
She was almost grateful she’d found out now.
Before she was in too deep. “You must’ve thought I was such an idiot. ”
“An idiot? Going up against you is like playing chess blindfolded. I was the stupid one when it came to you. You could’ve convinced me to do anything. You still could.”
“Why did you ask me to marry you, then?” she asked, stepping into his space and jutting up her chin. “If you weren’t plotting to steal my house, and you were so sure I was going to screw you over, why would you marry me in the first place?”
“Because I wanted you.” His voice ached, as if theirs could be a sad, simple love story and not a horror show. “Even though you terrified me, and I was waiting for it all to go wrong, I hoped it would go right, because of how much I wanted it to.”
“But not enough to really risk anything, right? You had to hedge your bets with this, this…oh my god.” The realization hit her like a slap. “That’s why you want to get divorced.”
The blood drained from his face. “No—”
Pressure built behind her eyes. “You wanted to divorce me to steal my house, and I deluded myself into thinking it was a romantic gesture. I’m so completely pathetic! Did you even talk to the bank? Was there ever a mortgage loan?”
“Of course there was.” He took her face in his hands, and she couldn’t help but melt into them.
It was muscle memory. A painful echo. Her protective shell slipped off her body like a silk sheet.
She was defenseless. “I meant what I said. I was always going to give you whatever you wanted.” His voice was deep and velvety, wrapping her up tight.
It would feel so good to curl up in that voice.
It would be so easy to let go. “I don’t care which one of us owns this house.
It’s a fucking house, Lainey. You’re my wife. ”
Her body tightened, his possessive intensity flowing over her skin like an electric current. But her anger was just as formidable.
She pulled his hands off her face. “Don’t call me that.”
“My wife? Why? Because it means this is real to me? It is.”
She couldn’t take the way he was looking at her, like she was breaking him apart and putting him together all at once. It wasn’t fair of him to do this to them and then look at her like that. Like he saw her. Like she mattered. And like she was the one doing something awful to him.
“Elliot, don’t—”
“I love you,” he told her in a rush. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you this whole time.”
“You’re not,” she argued, a single tear careening down her face.
“I am. Look at me, Lainey. I love you. You can see it. Everyone can. I don’t know how they couldn’t.”
There was no stopping the crying now. She wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand. “Well, that’s convenient.”
His laugh was hollow. “Do you think, when all this started, I wanted to feel this way? To think about you constantly? To miss you every time you leave the room? To research VPN setups so I can lie to my job about where I live, because I know the second you leave, I’m going with you?
Wherever you’re going, I’m going. I don’t even have a choice.
I’m not the kind of person who lies to their boss, Lainey.
I don’t research spousal visas for a place someone hasn’t even invited me to.
I don’t take dumb, impulsive risks. But I can’t help but find a way to be with you.
So it’s actually pretty damn inconvenient, if you ask me.
And it’s also the truth.” He looked to the ceiling and took a deep breath. “I don’t expect you to say it back—”
“Good.” Her laugh was bitter and mean. She hugged her ribs, her heart burning beneath them like a bare palm searing on a cast-iron pan.
If what she’d been feeling for Elliot was love, it had fully turned on her now.
Warm feelings were now hot coals. Pleasure was pain.
Her body was betraying her, like it always did.
“I’ve felt it for a while, but I didn’t want to put pressure on you.”
“Pressure like trapping me in a marriage I can’t leave without losing my house and my health? That kind of pressure?” Her tongue was barbed, her words slicing through the inches between them, but he didn’t back away.
“Take all of it. I don’t care. My place. Your place. Better yet, let’s sell it all and leave now.”
“What?” She choked on air.
His hands were trembling. He was in fight-or-flight mode, just like she was.
But stone walls were erecting around her heart in real time.
Brick by brick, mortar slathered in between, just like the hearth in the center of the room.
Safe. Controlled. Isolated. Without them, the flames licking up her chest would turn her to ash.
Loving with reckless abandon was a luxury she couldn’t afford.
“No,” she replied to his proposal.
“Why not? Because when we were strangers, we didn’t trust each other? After everything with Larry—”
“You’re not seriously comparing the two, are you? I made one decision without talking to you. I didn’t knowingly deceive you for months!”
“No, I’m not saying it’s the same.” He grabbed her hands as if to ground himself, and even now, as it was all falling apart, she wanted to be that for him. One last time.
His eyes held hers. “It’s just…now, I trust you. Over and over again, I prove to you that I trust you.”
“No, I trusted you! I went into this believing you, and that’s not how I am. I don’t let myself do that. But I trusted you.”
“No, you didn’t,” he said quietly, twisting her heart in his hands.
“You may have thought you were smarter than me, or more cunning than me, but you didn’t trust me.
You’re still making me earn that. And I’ll gladly do it.
I’ll spend the rest of my life earning it, but don’t act like you felt differently than I did when we first agreed to this plan. ”
“Fine,” she relented. “But since then, you’ve had so many opportunities to tell me. You could’ve drawn up new papers, but you didn’t.”
He leaned in even closer until the corner of his mouth brushed against her cheekbone.
“No, I couldn’t have,” he argued, his deep, resonant voice curling down her spine.
“Because at some point, the thing I was afraid of losing was no longer the house. It was this. And I couldn’t bring myself to risk it. ”
She felt her resolve weakening, pieces of her disappearing. If she let him keep talking, she might give in, but she’d never look at him the same way. No, she couldn’t listen to any more of this. She couldn’t bear it.
“That wasn’t for you to decide.” Tears fell freely down her face. There was no sense wiping them now.
“The only reason I’d ever want a divorce would be to do this all over again and marry you the right way.”
“Elliot, please just get out,” she begged.
“Lainey—”
“This place is still mine, right? Get out of my house.”
She turned her eyes to the hearth, not wanting to watch him go, or worse, expose the traitorous part of her that still hoped he wouldn’t. The part of her that could forgive the version of him who would fight for what they had.
She listened to the sound of his computer clicking shut, to his footfalls, and to the rumble of his truck reversing out her drive and away from her life.