Chapter 45
TWO MONTHS LATER
Billie
“What are you thinking, Billie?” Bailey’s voice was soft, but I could hear the way she was holding her breath. “This is too important. You actually have to say what’s on your mind.”
I stared at the divorce papers splayed before me on the lacquered white surface of my desk at Bliss Bridal, every page crisp and bright, as if the legal system had chosen only the most expensive paper for the slow-motion napalming of my personal history.
The words floated in black Helvetica, as sterile and efficient as the end of a marriage deserved.
It was officially ninety days. There was a countdown timer in the bottom right corner of my phone, ticking toward the date Adam Knight would no longer be, in any formal or legal way, my husband.
“He left,” I said quietly, my voice flat even to my own ears. “He stayed gone. How is that a man who loves me?”
There was a silence, brief but so dense it seemed to warp the air in the room.
Birdie and Bailey exchanged a look, the kind of look that comes from a lifetime of sharing a bathroom, a bedroom. Bailey was the first to break the impasse. “He was a kid.”
Birdie reached into her tote bag and withdrew a dog-eared copy of her issue of The Vow.
She slapped it on the desk with a flourish, then opened it to the center spread.
The page fell perfectly to the shot of me and Adam at the front of St. Jude’s, framed by the stained glass that looked like it had been pulled straight from a movie set.
In the photo, Adam’s hand is on my waist, my hair is falling in a half-perfect wave over my collarbone, and there’s a split second before our lips meet where I’m looking at him and he’s looking at me like we’re the only two people in the world.
Birdie tapped the page with the tip of her lavender-painted nail. “Exhibit A,” she said. “That is the face of a man in love.”
“It was a photo shoot,” I replied, but even as I said it, my voice faltered. I could remember the way Adam’s thumb had pressed into the hollow of my back, the way he’d whispered something about how I looked like an angel.
“He’s not a model or an actor, Billie,” Bailey pointed out gently, as if I needed reminding. “He’s Adam Knight. The most literal, least performative human being on earth.”
I shook my head. “It was Zion Ash,” I said, referencing the world-renowned photographer, who was famously adept at capturing fleeting moments and making them look like destiny.
Birdie rolled her eyes. “Did you hear the way he burst into your apartment screaming ‘she’s my wife.’ That’s the definition of giving that’s-my-wife energy.”
“He was scared,” I dismissed his behavior and pressed my palms against the desk, willing them to stop shaking. “He’s always been protective.”
Bailey’s hands made their way across the desk and landed on mine, soft and warm and infinitely nurturing. “Billie, he’s been miserable since you moved out. He hides it well for the girls, but every time they’re not looking, or he thinks they’re not looking, he looks like he’s dying inside.”
The alarm on my phone vibrated and I stood up. It was time to go.
“I’m sorry, Billie.” Bailey’s voice was soft, so soft I almost missed it.
I looked up at her, caught off guard. “Sorry?”
Her gaze flickered, then steadied. “I’m sorry you had to raise me and Birdie and then step up again when Grandma Betty and Grandpa Bill died for the business and the house. If that’s what’s holding you back… the girls, not wanting to—”
My hand fluttered up, waving away that theory. “No, it’s not. It was, I don’t know, at first, but not now.”
Bailey inhaled, clearly getting ready for a cross examination, but before she could probe further, Birdie piped in, demanding, “Then what is it?”
I hesitated, tracing the rim of my coffee mug, which had always tasted vaguely of vanilla after Birdie commandeered the machine for her daily dessert lattes.
It wasn’t the girls. I thought I wanted freedom, but what was freedom when you spent it being miserable because you had a family you were missing. No, it wasn’t them.
No, what haunted me, what pressed cold and sharp against my ribs, was the suspicion that all of this—the marriage, the grand gestures, the “she’s my wife!” declarations—was just Adam trying to do what he thought was right. Not what he wanted.
“What if that’s the only reason he wants me?” I blurted.
Bailey and Birdie exchanged a glance like synchronized swimmers. “What reason?” they both said.
A million half-finished sentences darted through my head.
Birdie’s face was wide open, waiting. Bailey’s was a wall, no, a dam, holding back the tide and trying so hard to look neutral it might crack under the strain.
Their belief in me was so heavy it sometimes felt like a straitjacket. But I had to say it.
“What if he only wants to be with me because he’s a dad now? Before the girls, he was going to move to London with Genesis. To start an entirely new life with her in a new country. And then, suddenly, he has twins I’m supposed to believe I’m the love of his life?”
Birdie snorted. “That would never have lasted,” she said, waving her hand as if shooing away a cloud of gnats. She leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and jabbed at The Vow magazine cover, with our faces a millimeter from kissing. “This? This is real. That London thing? That was a joke.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Birdie insisted, picking at a stray thread on her sleeve.
“I talked to her at the magazine launch when you guys disappeared and Bailey was trying to find you. She’s all flash and no follow-through.
She and Adam only ever managed a weekend together at a time.
Sometimes it was a three-day so seventy-two hours, tops, and if you think they used that time for deep, meaningful conversations instead of…
” She trailed off, made a face, and waved her hand.
“Sorry. I know you don’t want to hear that. ”
“It’s okay.” I tried to sound casual, but the way the words came out, thin and cracked, betrayed me. I pressed my thumb hard against the edge of the desk, grounding myself.
Birdie leaned forward, suddenly serious.
“She’s smart, and she’s funny, and obviously gorgeous, but she’s not as nice as she pretends to be.
I know he wouldn’t have stayed with her.
I really, really know it.” She tapped the edge of the magazine for emphasis.
“If Adam had moved there, he’d have lasted a few months.
Maybe six. He’d have realized it wasn’t real, and then he’d come home to find you, and you guys would have ended up together anyway. ”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came. The sudden rush of hope, so bright it was nearly blinding, felt dangerous. Tears threatened at the corners of my eyes. “You think so?”
Birdie nodded. “I do. The only thing that kept him away before was his dad, and being in the military. When that was done, he could have gone anywhere, but he came here. He came home. To you.” She smoothed her hands over the desk as if erasing invisible creases.
“He’s always belonged with you. The only reason he’s holding back now is…
Well, he wants to do right by you and he thinks you don’t want to be you know…
tied down with him having the girls now. ”
Bailey reached out and put her hand over mine.
“That’s the thing, Billie. You are so used to sacrificing for everyone else you can’t even see how much he loves you.
You just assume you’re… the fallback plan, but right now, he’s sacrificing by letting you go.
He wants to fight for you, but he’s trying to do what he thinks is right by you. ”
My phone buzzed again.
“Shit. I’m late.”
“Do you want us to come with you?”
“No, I think I should do this alone.”
“Should I tell Olivia to be expecting you?” Bailey called as I headed out the back door.
“Tell her I hope I’m cancelling!”
My sisters’ voices followed me out, a burst of “You got this!” that trailed into the parking lot and after me like a confetti parade.
Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe the sudden sunlight, but the world outside felt shockingly crisp.
The air was cool and breezy, and it made my heart bang against the inside of my chest as I hurried to my car.
I had a moment, when my hands started shaking so hard I almost dropped the papers as I got in the car, hopefully, I wouldn’t need them.
The drive over to Ever After Matchmaking, I tried to think about what I was actually going to say to Adam.
I was so conflicted. I wanted to say that I was sorry, but I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for.
If I could rewind and do it all again, I would do it all again, exactly the same, just maybe with better emotional boundaries and less running away at the first sign of actual intimacy.
I tried to rehearse lines in my head, but every time I did, my mind skipped like a scratched record. I’d get as far as “Adam, I need to say something—” and then my mental teleprompter would just blank.
The fifteen-minute drive passed in a flash and soon I was parking.
There was a particular type of nervousness reserved for walking up to your soon-to-be ex-husband as he waits for you in front of a matchmaking office, and I had it in spades.
Adam was easy to spot—tall, gorgeous, hair still damp from a recent shower and doing that rebel-curl thing at his temple.
He wore his usual uniform: battered jeans and a navy-blue hoodie, sleeves pushed up over his tatted, muscular forearms. He saw me the second I pulled up, and I swear he smiled for real, the kind of smile that made his whole face light up.
He even jogged over to my side of the car and opened my door, like we were on some retro date.
“You think we’re the first people to ever go to a matchmaker to get a divorce?” he teased.
“Knowing Olivia?” I said, stepping out. “I’m guessing no.”