Chapter 36
“Ohhhhhhhhh.”
The clerk gives a double-shouldered shrug. “I am just so, so sorry.” His tone tells me he’s not sorry at all.
“You see,” he says, tilting his head, “since you were in such a hurry, I took a second look at your paperwork. You’d been so thoughtful as to leave a note explaining that you’d tried to file with Easy Out Divorce.
And”—he clears his throat as if he’s prepping to deliver a punch line—“since Easy Out Divorce is now a known scammer, the courts have a temporary offer that anyone who was scammed by Easy Out can get a special, fast annulment. So I fast-tracked it for you. Isn’t that swell? ”
“You did?” I ask, as my shoulders sag.
The clerk clasps his hands together. “It’s with great pleasure that I tell you your annulment was granted today, and this marriage has been dissolved.”
My heart sinks.
But only for a second. Because where there’s a will, there’s a way. “No problem,” I say with a smile. This time, I’m practicing being a good guy. Because good guys win. And this good guy knows there’s more than one tool to fix something broken.
I turn to Natalie. “Want to bet there’s a city hall or someplace like that where we could get married again? Let’s do it right. Do it now.”
Her eyebrows rise, and she asks the clerk where civil ceremonies are performed.
He points up. “Sixth floor. Office of Civil Marriage Unions.” He hands us the papers and calls out next.
After we snag a marriage license, ask Lila to be our witness, and confirm our early evening walk-in appointment, Natalie and I stand in front of a judge in his office chambers, and we get married again.
This time it’s simpler.
This time we’re sober.
There’s no twenty-four-hour chapel, or sorta Elvis impersonator. Just my wife and me, sealing our love once more. I don’t ask her to undo it tomorrow, because I want to be entangled with her forever when we say I do.
Then, I kiss my bride in our second marriage, even though it’s our first legally.
But who cares about technicalities when my lips are on hers?
She tastes so lovely, and I’ll never tire of kissing her.
My head spins from the sweetness of her mouth, and my body lights up from this connection we share.
“You’re stuck with me now,” I say when our lips separate.
With her hands looped around my neck, she murmurs, “That’s where I want to be.”
As we head down the steps of the courthouse into the sunset of this city, leaving Lila on her own, I flash back to the moment here earlier today, when we were falling apart. I reach for her arm. Wrap my hand around it. “Hey, let’s make this the end of us ending. What do you say to that?”
She grips my hand. “It had better be the end of breaking up.”
I run my fingers along the back of her dress. “I guess it’s not your annulment dress anymore.”
She gestures to the orange fabric. “It’s my wedding dress. And truth be told, I wore it today hoping something like this might happen.”
“You’re such a planner.”
“That’s why you need me.”
“I do need you. And that’s why I want to tell you my plan for rejecting your resignation.”
She loops her arms around my neck and says, “Tell me. But make it fast, because I’d really like to consummate our marriage.”
It’s safe to say my proposal floors her. She cries again, and they’re tears of happiness. When we make it back to my room, I kiss them away, strip off all her clothes, then mine, too.
She’s naked before me, and it occurs to me that we’ve only made love once before without our clothes on. We’ve always been rushing, risking, tempting fate. The last time we were chest-to-chest, skin to skin, was on our first wedding night a few months ago.
And I don’t care what the courts say about marriages being dissolved. Not existing. Never happening.
We happened, and we’re happening again, so I join her on the bed.
When I enter her, we both groan. Electricity shoots through me.
It feels like pure bliss as I sink into her, savoring the way we fit.
She moans happily and meets my gaze. It’s intense, the way we look at each other.
The way we want to look into each other’s eyes.
“Can we do this every night?” she asks in a sexy purr as she wraps those gorgeous legs around my ass.
“Every morning, too,” I say on a thrust, and we move together. “Want to know why?”
“Why?” she asks, as she arches her spine, her lips falling open.
“Because I love fucking my wife,” I say with a throaty groan. “And I fucking love my wife.”
I’m rewarded with a wild cry of pleasure, then another, and it doesn’t take her long at all to fly high. Pretty soon, I’m doing that thing she loves—coming loud and hard. I might even roar.
I’d like to say we spend the night riding the rollercoaster or the Ferris wheel. But nope. We go horizontal again. All night long. It’s as perfect as a wedding night can be. And I’m not just saying that because we order an Oreo sundae from room service sometime in the middle of the night.
But that is good, too. And I do like Oreos.