Natalie: With the Vegas job back on that means we can get . . .YOU KNOW!

Wyatt: Get it on again on the rollercoaster? Add the Ferris wheel to our repertoire?

Well, a man can dream. I scroll over to my news app as I wait, but before I can open it, her reply arrives. Hope rises in me. Hope that she feels the same.

Natalie: We can get annulled properly.

Oh.

Turns out she’s not on the same page as I am.

Not at all.

Not in the least.

I’m a balloon punctured, all the air leaking out of me. My phone dings with another message from her.

Natalie: This is good, Wyatt. We don’t have to worry about all the paperwork and details of a New York divorce. New York is complicated. We should have thought of this before—this way is easy.

Wyatt: Why is it easy?

Natalie: When we fly back to Vegas to start the job, I’ll need to be there the first day or so to help with the setup, so we can get our annulment in person. Go to the courthouse, file it ourselves, and we’ll be off the books. If the judge needs to see us, we’ll still be there because of work. But the bottom line is it’ll be done. Just like you wanted.

I swallow and scrub a hand over my jaw. Sitting up in bed, I toss off the covers and swing my feet to the floor.

This is good, right?

It’s what we’ve both wanted. Hell, it’s what I pretty much demanded from the second I woke up in Vegas. But now it seems like we want different things. She’s insanely excited to split, while the prospect of it feels like some kind of rabid animal is gnawing a hole in my chest.

That hole deepens over the next few days as I take care of a few odds and ends for clients. It persists as I work out at the gym, as I grab a beer with Chase and he tells me the leasing agent is now making him jump through more hoops for the apartment, as I volunteer with Nick at the rescue, and especially as Natalie and I prep for Lila’s job in the city of sin. It’s a gaping maw when we rescind the New York divorce paperwork, since it’ll be easier to deal with our annulment in Vegas and we don’t want the two sets of paperwork to cause confusion.

As we board the plane late one afternoon to fly to the city where we were married—the same goddamn place where we’re supposed to untie that knot—that ache tunnels through my chest, leaving my organs raw and shredded.

Even with my partner-in-fun-and-work in the seat next to me, I don’t want to tell jokes or share stories. I don’t want to laugh. All I want is for this shitty sensation to end.

Natalie is upbeat every second, though. Somewhere over the middle of the country, she reminds me of the plan for the first day on the job.

“Okay,” I say, halfheartedly.

Then she lets me know which materials will be waiting for me.

“That’s fine.”

And she mentions the schedule once more, including a lunch break at the courthouse on day one.

“Sounds doable,” I say, my tone lackluster.

She taps her finger to her chin, regarding me from her leather seat next to mine. “You okay there, Hammer?”

I nod. “Yeah. I’m great.”

She narrows her eyes and pats my leg. “Are you sure? Because it seems like you’re in a funk.”

I wave a hand in the air, like this is nothing.

Out of nowhere, Natalie opens her mouth wide and moos like a mad fucking cow—a long, persistent noise that makes me feel as if I’ve landed in a farm.

Startled, I stare with bugged out eyes. “What the . . .?”

She fixes on a sweet-and-innocent smile and says with a straight face, even as other passengers glance her way, “I’ve been working on my repertoire. Do you like my cow?”

And it hits me what she did and why. A laugh works its way through me, and for the first time in days, that ulcerous feeling fades momentarily. Because of her. Trying to get me out of my funk. With a farm animal sound.

Fuck, I think I’m in . . .

“But don’t forget, I’m still waiting to hear the roar that you promised me,” she says with a wink.

And I know precisely why I feel so crummy. Because the closer we get to Vegas, the nearer I come to losing her. She’s slipping through my fingers, this woman tangled up with me in the mess we made one crazy night. Now, I want all those entanglements. I crave them. Judging from this emptiness in my chest, I fucking need them, because this moment with her—her sweetness, her zaniness, her upside-down sense of humor that matches mine—is the only balm to that ache.

I don’t think anymore.

I know.

I’m in love with my wife.

And the thought of her becoming my ex-wife seems horribly wrong. Like philandering termites. Or a cat that won’t meow. It goes against nature.

The woman I want is the woman I married. Just a few days ago I thought we shouldn’t be tied like this, that we should have a fresh start. But now that I’m certain of how I feel, I don’t want the two of us to end. I want us to keep going.

The only problem is she desperately wants me to be her ex-husband by tomorrow at noon.

32

I can fix a broken sink. I can hang a gorgeous set of kitchen cabinets. I can build a goddamn house.

These are my skills.

But knowing how to deal with sticky situations involving the opposite sex? Let’s just say that’s never been my stock in trade.

That’s putting it mildly, right?

I suck at making the right choices when it comes to the ladies.

After a night at the Bellagio—during which I toss and turn and weigh a million options, some of which include knocking on the door to Natalie’s room, saying nothing and just fucking her instead—I’m still in the same vexing spot as I was the day before.