The quiet corner of the rooftop bar and restaurant was private enough for Ethan to discuss what he needed to with me outside of the office. If I needed to spend another hour cooped up, sitting at my desk, I was likely to lose my mind.
“Please tell me you have good news,” I said, glancing over the small, leather-bound menu.
“Some.” He leaned back in his seat, pushing his glasses up his nose as he lifted his briefcase up and onto the table. He pulled out four stacks of papers, each held together with binder clips, and passed them to me. “We’re likely to win each of the Blackwood’s lawsuits. We probably won’t even need to show our faces at the hearings.”
I flipped through them hesitantly, truly not understanding a word of the legal jargon that littered them, not even the highlighted phrases. “How?”
“Because what they were trying to do was technically illegal. But there is still a chance that each of the companies won’t be liable for repaying what you shelled out to acquire them, so we’re still working on that,” he explained, passing me another, smaller set of papers that made even less sense to me. I took them regardless.
“We need that money back,” I said.
“I’m aware. We’re not fully out of the woods.”
I put on a show of flipping through each sheet of documents for a few moments, stopping only to inform the waitress of what I was ordering. Ethan looked far too interested in the specials as she rattled them off, and for a split second, I wondered if his extensive questions about the fish of the day and its natural habitat were his idea of flirting.
When I was happy with how much I’d performed, I passed the papers back, settling into my seat with my freshly delivered glass of Lagavulin 26.
“Was that flirting?” I asked, trying my best to lighten the mood. I hadn’t been able to look at him as a friend in what felt like weeks. He was Ethan The Lawyer lately instead of Ethan Turner, and I was beginning to feel desperate for a return to some kind of normalcy. There was just too much going on lately.
He shrugged. “I was just curious about wahoo and why they’re labeled as tropical when they’re also considered subtropical.”
I raised a brow at him. “And you thought the waitress would be the right person to ask instead of, I don’t know, Google?”
His gaze narrowed as he pushed his glasses up his nose again. “She was attractive.”
“There it is.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, should I do it your way and have Elvis marry us?” he questioned, pursing his lips to hide the inkling of a grin that flashed.
I snorted as I set my glass back down on the table. “See? That’s the Ethan I miss. We’ve been far too wrapped up in all this shit to actually talk.”
He sighed as he reached back into his briefcase again. “Then we should get the biggest problem out of the way so that we can actually enjoy our lunch without it hanging over me.”
I groaned in frustration as he pulled more paperwork out. I knew there had to be a catch, knew there had to be more than just somewhat-good-news. But if it meant that we could try to relax after this, then I’d deal with hearing whatever it was and knock back the rest of my whiskey to put it out of my mind.
The small stack landed in front of me. Along the top, Application For Annulment: Notice of Acceptance was printed in bolded letters, and it was addressed to Damien Blackwood and Olivia Martin.
“I couldn’t cancel it,” Ethan said, his voice far calmer than it had been before. It was almost sympathetic. “It’s not finished. You two still need to sign and appear before a judge. But the paperwork was filed and approved.”
I swallowed down the bile that was beginning to rise up my esophagus. “Fuck.”
“Damien,” he said softly, dragging my attention back to him. “It’s not finished. This can’t be held against you right now. A court date needs to be set, and you have sixty days to arrange that. It will only be official if the judge finalizes it. You can wait.”
It’s not finished.
“If I were you…” His jaw ticked as he looked between me and the heavy weight in my hands. “I would wait to set a date until after the custody case next month.”
The intensity of the choice I’d made was already eating at me, but this just made it so much worse. “She’ll want the date set as soon as possible.”
“I can’t advise you legally to not tell her,” he said, his voice so quiet I could barely hear it over the clinking of glasses and idle chatter. “But as your friend, I can tell you that it isn’t unheard of for legal documents to take weeks to mail to their intended recipients. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You think I should hide it until after the custody case,” I said, setting the papers beside me on the table. Those would need to come home with me regardless. “If she finds out…”
“She has no reason to.”
“There’s a date on it, Ethan.”
“Again, cogs turn slowly in government cases,” he explained. “Things can be filed and approved and printed and not mailed for ages.”
“I don’t want to lose her,” I breathed. His jaw ticked again and my walls went up immediately, shutting down the realness I was far too ready to supply him with. He already knew it, but I didn’t need to drive that home any further. “She’s amazing with Noah. The kid idolizes her. And she’s been putting so much time into him, so much of herself… She’s even been helping me look for a nanny to take care of him after school for when this is settled. I don’t want to break the girl.”
“You don’t want to break yourself.”
“I don’t want to hurt Noah, either,” I sighed. “If she goes… She’s been the only steady, female presence in his life since his mom died.”
Ethan’s eyes met mine, pointed and stressed and far too knowing. He pushed his stupid fucking glasses up his nose again, and for a split second, I wanted to break them in two. “Then you know what you need to do.”
