I get down on one knee, and her eyes widen. I was nervous before, but I’m not anymore. I’ve never been so sure of what I want and what I need. “I’m going all in, and I’m asking you for a second chance at marriage. I want to go home to New York and live with you and share a life with you, and I want you to be my wife. Let’s stay married. Hell, let’s get married again. Let’s renew our vows. Marry me over and over. Every year. Let’s make it our thing.”

Her eyes turn to moons, and her jaw falls open. “Oh my God,” she gasps.

I take out the gift I bought at the Wynn—at the fancy jewelry shop in the fanciest hotel. I open the blue velvet box and show her a two-carat emerald-cut solitaire.

“Be my gibbon,” I say with wild hope.

She falls to her knees, throws her arms around me, and kisses me like she wants all the same things. It’s only been a few hours without kissing her, but hell, it’s so damn good to do it again, to feel her lips on mine where they belong. When she breaks the kiss, she meets my gaze, and says softly, sweetly, “I’ll be your gibbon. But don’t you know, I already am?”

The smile that is my greatest joy spreads across her beautiful face, and I can’t believe how lucky I am. “Oh, and about that letter of resignation you sent me,” I begin, tapping my chin. “I had another idea.”

“Tell me,” she says, practically bouncing. But then she stops, and her smile disappears as she looks at her watch. “Wyatt,” she whispers, in that soft kind of voice that portends trouble. My heart speeds up.

“What is it?”

“We need to go. The courthouse is closing. They’re filing our annulment paperwork.”

I grab her hand and tug her up. “I don’t want this marriage to be annulled.”

“I don’t either.”

Lila chimes in. “Let’s take my car. It feels like something a fairy godmother would do.”

And, you know, that pretty much describes her role in this story. We rush out of the store, slide into her sleek black car, and peel away.

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.”