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Your wife. I couldn’t help but snort, even as my tummy dipped.
Beside me, Liam’s serious, solemn expression eased, and suddenly, he was grinning. We shared this look. Like we were both in on the joke. Silently acknowledging how ridiculous we were. An ex-husband conveniently taking his ex-wife to the hospital, arguing at every turn while simultaneously checking one another out.
He sniffled a laugh, and I couldn’t help but mimic it.
The nurse looked like she was ready to clock out.
I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t figure us out either.
I’d told Marigold there were few things I didn’t remember about her. This, though, was one of those things.
Marigold on pain pills was…different. Cute. Loud. Cuddly. So, so cuddly.
The X-rays showed no broken bones, and the doctor confirmed that it was a severe sprain. She would have to wear a bulky gray and black wrap for the next three weeks and would have to limit the weight and pressure she put on it.
That information had gone in one ear and out the other. Between the emergency room and her house, she used that arm to support herself no less than ten times.
When they’d given her low-dosage pain medication for the sharp ache she’d described, I’d forgotten completely that she didn’t take medicine. Ever.
I swore the woman never got sick, and if she did, she was down and out for less than twenty-four hours. She could be hacking up a lung or puking, and the next day, she’d be bustling around as if nothing happened.
That left us here. With cuddly and high-as-a-kite Marigold pressed up against my side from knee to shoulder as I attempted to unlock her back door. The warmth and softness of her body was making my brain short-circuit and my knees wobble, so fitting the key in the lock had become a bit of a challenge.
She told me we could go through the front, or at least that’s what I thought she was rambling about. But I remembered how privileged Paul looked coming in that back door. I wanted to feel that way at least once.
“Did you always smell like this?” She nuzzled into my shoulder, something that future Marigold would probably want to go back in time to stop.
“Uh…” My brain was still offline. “I think so?”
She took another sniff, and I jiggled the key harder. “Pine needles and cinnamon. Leather too, I think?”
One time, after we moved into our first apartment and money was tight, Marigold worked as a perfume salesperson on the weekends to help make ends meet. She was great at it. She’d talk about fragrance notes in her sleep. A trait that had apparently never left her. She sold a lot and made hardly any money. By the end of the day, her feet would be killing her.
It was one of many reasons I’d doubled down on work back then. The pressure to provide had been intense. Because she deserved the world. And she deserved a man who could supply her with the life she wanted. But no matter how hard I worked, at the end of the day, that man wasn’t me. I guess that trait—the urge to give her the world—had never left me.
In a moment of sheer luck, the key slid into the lock, and I fumbled the door open. Just as I was ready to usher her in, I caught sight of the doorbell camera I’d installed for her a couple of years back.
“For the record,” I said, raising my hands and pointing to the drugged-up ray of sunshine snuggled into my side, “you’re cuddling into me.”
My ex-wife laughed into my shoulder as I left the message for future Marigold.
“Alrighty, let’s get you to bed.”
“Wait, I’m wearing underwear with flying pigs on them. Let me change first.” She grasped the waistband of her shorts with her good hand.
Heat coiled low inside me, which was at odds with the way my heart lurched. This. Was. My. Worst. Nightmare.
I grasped her wrist to stop her. “No, for the love of all that is holy, please do not take anything off.”
The last thing I needed was to be alone with a half-naked, delusional Marigold who would be right back to hating me tomorrow.
I cleared my throat and rolled my neck. “Where’s your bedroom?”
Marigold was still working—unsuccessfully, thank God—to untie her shorts. Now that I’d taken a breath and assessed the situation, it was obvious I was in no danger. The woman probably couldn’t even take her shoes off in this state.
She peered up at me, wearing the most innocent smile. It was so reminiscent of the girl I’d fallen in love with in high school that I expected her to ask to borrow a pencil. I’d give her one with my number on a sticky note attached to it. She’d blush and roll her eyes. I’d lean back and smile at her, knowing she had to be mine.
And she had been.
