As panic thickens in my veins, I cycle through our conversations about lawyers. When the Easy Out service fell apart, Natalie mentioned talking to an attorney friend of Charlotte’s, someone specializing in family law. She said the woman gave her useful guidance on an annulment versus a divorce in New York. At the farmer’s market, we even talked about not needing attorneys, and we agreed to keep our split shark-free.

By all accounts, we don’t need a lawyer today.

And that’s when the coldness in my veins turns to dread. My memory latches on to the dinner party, to Charlotte shushing Spencer, to me realizing that Natalie and her sister have secrets.

Big secrets. Maybe the lawyer they talked to was never the family law one. Maybe Natalie’s making a case for something else.

I stab the about us section on the website, and that’s when the knife slices through my back. The firm specializes in employment cases of class action, discrimination, whistleblowers, and sexual harassment.

Natalie didn’t hire an attorney to divorce me. She hired an attorney to sue me.

“Oh shit,” I mutter, with a palpable fear in my voice as I put two and two together, since I can only get them to add up to this—sexual harassment. That’s why she hired an employment lawyer to make a claim.

A reasonable claim.

She’ll have the text messages, too, the whole exchange about a boss falling for his employee. And that same employee lost other work because of that boss. She can’t be suing the dojo. She doesn’t have a contract with the dojo. She has a contract with me.

My stomach plummets, and I silently curse myself.

I did it again. I mixed business with pleasure. And this time, the results may be disastrous. This time, it’s not my bad luck with women. The fault is one hundred percent on me, and this is so much worse than a poisoned sandwich.

I should have gone cold turkey on Natalie a long time ago.

33

I do my best to hide the rampant fear that races through me as we stop at Lila’s on the way to the courthouse. I have half a mind to avoid Lila and Natalie, but after the trouble we had with this job before, I can’t be a no-show. Besides, I might need Lila’s money now more than ever. I couldn’t be happier that Natalie and I are filing in three hours. I wish I could speed up the process.

The clock ticks loudly in my ear with every passing second as we review the plans for the kitchen remodel.

I’m focused as we talk, narrowing in on the job, not on the woman I just screwed who’s going to try to screw me. I won’t let her. I texted Chase that I need to talk to his cousin again, and I’m sure as soon as my buddy finishes removing a hairbrush from an eardrum or a thimble from a belly button, he’ll ring me.

“We should have it done in a few weeks,” I say crisply. Tension winds in me so goddamn tight I might snap any second.

“I’m so thrilled this worked out,” Lila says, and drops a hand on Natalie’s shoulder. “And this woman deserves all the credit. Getting to know her during the self-defense class helped me realize that I wanted this remodel to happen, and how we could make it work. I was scared, but she encouraged me.”

My eyes widen to the size of the ocean. “Did she, now?”

Lila nods. “She has your back.”

“I bet she does,” I say, and the picture comes into even clearer focus. Natalie must have worked her ass off to get this job for us, maybe to try to claim she’s running my business, too.

Fuckity, fuckity, fuckity. What a sneaky little pussycat she is. Slinking into everything. Jumping into every goddamn bag.

“Oh, Natalie. Don’t let me forget to show you the closet,” Lila says with a bright smile.

Natalie sets a hand on my arm. “Lila was raving about the closet here during a self-defense class last week, and I’ve been dying to see it.”

As Lila scurries her to the closet, all I can think is I’m an hour closer to ending this fucking union with the woman I just fucked.

The mustached clerk with wire-rimmed glasses takes the papers, staples them together, and stamps them with the date.

“These will be filed today, and we’ll notify you in a few weeks when the annulment has been granted,” he says, without raising his face. His one-note voice should grate on my ears, but it sounds like sweet music because I’m one step closer to slicing this woman out of my life.

Natalie bounces on her toes. “Thank you so much,” she says, and no one, not even Mr. Clean himself, could wipe the grin off her face. She’s so happy to be splitting up, and it’s irksome. Suspicious. Another piece of evidence against her.

I tap my fingers against the worn wood of the clerk’s counter. “How long does this take?” I ask Bored Man.

“A few weeks,” he drones.

“But on average is a few weeks one week, two weeks, three weeks, four?”

Slowly, like it costs him something to lift his chin, he looks up. “A few weeks,” he repeats, which loosely translates to shut the fuck up.

“But what is that generally speaking?”

He gives me a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me stare. “It’s more than a day and less than many days.”

I sigh, but like a dog with a bone, I won’t let up. “Can you ballpark, please?”

Natalie grips my bicep. “Wyatt,” she says, gently, “he said a few weeks.”

“But I would like to know what a few weeks means,” I say to her. She swallows and looks away from me. I turn back to the guy, trying honey instead of vinegar. “I would be so grateful if you could give us a rough estimate? Just narrow it down a tiny bit more, pretty please?”