32. Emily

Calling Simon was just about the last thing I wanted to do, but I didn't know who else could help.

I'm not ready to talk to him yet even though I know I need to get over myself and have the stupid conversation. I'm just embarrassed and I'm not ready to get my heart broken.

Because I caught feelings. It's dumb, I know, but I let myself start to get attached to my fake husband, even though it's been clear from the start that we're only together for five years at the most. He's with me because he wants something—and I'm with him for the same.

Now he can get that something from a different wife and he doesn't need me anymore.

It's fine, he was honest from the start about what this was, and I still let myself want him. I feel stupid and mortified and I just want to bury my head until this all goes away on its own, but that's not how life works.

I'm the girl that got two jobs to help support her dad when shit went truly bad. I can get over myself and do the right thing, even if that means having a really awkward conversation.

I pace back and forth across the living room. Dad's at a doctor's appointment and the house is empty, but he'll be back in about a half hour. I'm almost ready to call this whole thing off when a truck pulls up and parks out front.

My stomach's doing flips. I open the front door and watch Simon walking toward me, looking gorgeous even though he just came straight here from a freaking prison. His jeans fit his muscular thighs like a glove and his button-down shirt's basically one cough away from popping off. His arms are veined, muscular, and gorgeous, and the way he looks at me makes my heart do stupid, silly things.

"Thanks for coming," I say because I'm not sure how else to get into this. He pauses at the bottom of the porch and looks up at me, head tilted to the side, eyes inscrutable. I want to scream, or maybe I want to throw myself into his arms and beg him not to leave me. Either one's stupid so I just motion for him to follow me.

I make uncomfortable, rapid-fire small talk as I lead him upstairs. He doesn't say much, mostly grunts in reply and keeps on staring at me like he thinks his eyes can make me melt—and it's honestly working. My body's betraying me as my heart races and sweat beads on my back and a tingling, buzzing sensation drives up between my legs and into my core. The bastard has a sex stare and it's killing me.

"I know this is weird, but I just found it today when I was straightening up his room." Dad's not the best at taking care of himself on account of being in his seventies so I'm in the habit of tidying when I get the chance. I gesture at his closet, a little walk-in with a mirror hanging on the back of the door. Simon goes over to it and hesitates before pulling a light cord.

The clothes are all shoved to the side, leaving the walls mostly uncovered. Papers are tacked up all over the place, some of them printed off his computer and some of them official-looking documents, with tacks and red string connecting everything. It's a dense web of associations, and my face went numb when I saw it earlier.

Simon doesn't panic. He goes deeper into the closet, tracing the lines and squinting at the pages. I didn't have the nerve to get that far, only saw the mess and instantly thought Dad was losing it again. He didn't drop down the rabbit hole like this last time, but he definitely was paranoid and short with me toward the end when he realized what was happening and didn't know how to stop it.

But this closet is a whole new level of batshit.

"It looks like a serial killer," Simon grunts, not looking at me.

"Can you please not say that?" I hug myself tightly, anxiety going wild. "I know it looks crazy, okay? I don't know how to help him."

Simon lets out a long breath and gestures me over. "Look at this."

I hesitate, partly because I don't want to venture into my dad's madness, but partly because I don't want to be in a cramped closet with Simon right now. I'm feeling too many things for him and physical proximity isn't going to be good for my self-esteem, but there's no other option.

I stand right near him, doing my best not to touch, but it's impossible. My elbow grazes his and our sides are nearly pressed together as I lean in and squint at what he's showing me.

"It's the last check," I say in astonishment. It looks exactly like an official government document would, but Dad wrote out VOID in big red letters. "Did he forget to cash this or something?"

"I don't know. But look at this." Simon follows a string to a print-out that looks like a business listing from another government website. "That's one of my LLCs. And look, he's got a dozen more pages just like this one." He stares, mouth tightening into a line. "Motherfucker. He figured it out."

"He did what?" I step closer, trying to follow the connections, which only makes me press myself against him. There's a terrible moment where we're standing very close and I can feel his breath on my neck and his hand presses against my side as he steadies me, and I release this ugly, evil little whimper at his touch, and I jerk myself away. He stares as I retreat to the closet entrance, heart racing.

"Sorry," I say like ten times. "I wasn't careful. I didn't mean?—"

Simons expression hardens. "You're apologizing for touching me? That's how bad things are between us?"

I turn away, biting down on my thumbnail. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Then when are we going to talk? Because I have a lot I want to say."

I close my eyes, feeling sick, afraid for my dad and drowning in self-loathing. "You don't have to say anything, okay? I know what we need to do. We got married because you needed me to help you become Don and that plan didn't work out. Now you have a new chance, so why wouldn't you go after it? I mean, what do you care if you're married to me or some other girl? I get it, we had fun, but you have to do what you have to do. It's fine. We don't need to discuss it. Just send me the divorce papers?—"

Simon steps out of the closet, releasing an annoyed growl. I'm forced backward, stumbling toward the bed as he stands over me, looking all annoyed, menacing, and drop-dead beautiful. The big, handsome bastard looks even better when he's staring at me like he wants to rip my head off with his teeth.

"I'm not divorcing you," he says and looks like he wants to reach for me, but I move back, shaking my head.

"Yes, you are. It's totally stupid not to. I can't help you become the Don, but that girl can, right? That's everything you want. Why would you give it up for me?"

He takes a deep breath and seems to compose himself. When he looks at me again, his face is calm, but the tension in the room hasn't dispersed. If anything, it's worse.

"You're my wife, topolina," he says, voice low and resonant with a thousand different emotions, all of which shudder down my spine. I hug myself tighter, trying to keep my body from reacting to his every word, but it's impossible. "I'm not going to divorce you because I don't want to. There's nothing in this world that could convince me to leave you, much less to marry some other woman. I don't give a damn about my end of the deal anymore. I want you, and I have you, and I'm not giving that up."

That's what I've wanted to hear since I ran from the house. Those exact words have been playing through my most pathetic fantasies, and now he's said them, but somehow, they don't do anything but make me want to cry.

Because he's wrong.

I don't think he's lying, but he's wrong. "Marrying that girl gives you everything you've dreamed of. I can't let you give that up for this."

"You don't get to make that decision."

"Simon—"

"I want you, Emily. I need you. I don't fucking know when that happened or how you managed to crawl under my skin, but I'm too fucking into you."

I back away, skirting the bed, putting space between us. "Stop saying that. Okay? Just stop. It's meaningless. We were never forever."

He only stares at me, and he doesn't say it, but I know what he's thinking.

I'm thinking it too.

We could be.

But that's stupid and childish. It's a silly fairy-tale ending. This relationship is a business deal, and now that our goals are no longer aligned, we have no real reason to stay together. Which means we should end things and move on before it gets worse.

"He figured it out," Simon says, and the abrupt change in conversation takes me a second to catch on.

"What do you mean, he figured it out? That crazy-person shit in there actually makes sense to you?"

Simon nods and looks back at the closet thoughtfully. "Your dad's pretty fucking smart, I have to admit. And probably very paranoid. But all that in there, it's the web of shell companies and fake corporations I set up in order to funnel money into your father's account while pretending it's extra Social Security payments. None of them are directly linked to me, but he definitely realized that those checks aren't coming from the government. Honestly, I'm impressed, because I put a hell of a lot of work into making this look as real as possible."

I let that sink in. Dad's not having a breakdown. He's not getting scammed again.

He just saw through our stupid ruse.

I start laughing. I can't help myself. I move past Simon and head into the closet, and I start to see what he means. Dad took the tiny little breadcrumbs Simon left behind and unraveled the whole thing via Google searches and public information, which is honestly impressive. I lean against the wall, laughing with my head thrown back, laughing because it's better than crying and I sure as fuck need a release.

Simon stands nearby watching with an expression that suggests he thinks I'm one second away from making my own crazy-girl closet.

"What the hell are we going to do now?" I ask him, finally getting myself under control. "If he didn't cash that check, he's going to fall behind on payments soon."

"We'll need a new scheme." He hesitates and smiles a bit. "Assuming you don't want to just tell him the truth."

I laugh again at that, throwing up my hands. "What's there to tell him? Oh, hey, Dad, sorry, we were reverse-scamming you, whoops. My ex-husband and I just wanted to put more money in your pockets but you figured us out. Aw, shucks, our bad, Pops."

Simon rolls his eyes. "I'm not your ex-husband. I keep trying to say?—"

I wave my hands and interrupt him. "Not the point. I'm seriously trying to come up with some reasonable way to spin this, because we obviously can't just leave things like this."

Simon seems to consider it, but he doesn't get the chance to answer, because downstairs I hear the front door open and slam shut. And my father's voice drifts up the steps: "Emily? I'm back. Damn doctor says I'm the healthiest man he's ever seen. He says I'm the first human to live to three hundred. Go figure. You hungry?" His voice tails off as he shuffles back into the kitchen.

I stare at Simon, and he stares back. A smile quirks at his mouth and he shrugs. "Just go with the truth."