Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 111980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“There’s more?” Sawyer’s eyes widen.
“Believe it,” I say, emphatic. “First, I hate balloons, and I don’t hate anything. I’m so not a hater, but I hate balloons.”
“I’m very much a hater, so please take this with all the respect of one—balloons deserve it. Now, what’s the second thing?”
I pause to set up the painful payoff. Well, I want to win dessert rights. “His father owns the company I worked for. He fired me today.”
Sawyer winces, then utters a sympathetic “Ouch,” before adding, “shit, Chloe. That sucks. I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks, but I’ll figure something out. I always do,” I say, trying my best to be upbeat since…what’s the alternative? Pretty sure moping doesn’t get you ahead. “Oh, one more thing! Have I mentioned he’s not just my ex but my ex-husband? We were married for six months a few years ago. This was after our friends dared us to say “I do” at a high school reunion in Vegas. I learned my lesson—don’t work with your ex.”
“Or get married on a dare?” he asks dryly.
I lift a finger, like I’m tapping the air. “That one too. So many lessons.” I let out a long, satisfied breath. “That did feel good. Now, go,” I say, making a rolling gesture with my hand. “Your turn. Just see if you can top that.”
He rubs his palms together, blows out a breath. “Ready?”
“I am.”
“You sure?”
“Positive?”
“Be prepared to admit defeat.”
My jaw drops. “C’mon. How can you be so sure?”
“I’m sure,” he says with the same confidence he displayed when he told me he’d fuck me senseless. Is it weird that it turns me on a little bit again? Well, call me weird.
“Because of this,” he adds, then sticks out his arm. Straight in front of him.
I don’t get it. “It’s a nice forearm?”
He swings his gaze importantly to his watch. “For Christmas a year and a half ago, I got a smartwatch for my fiancée and one for me.”
I sit bolt upright, clutching my robe closed at my neck. My skin prickles. “You’re engaged?”
“No, fuck no. In fact, I’m not engaged—thanks to this watch.”
Now I’m really lost. “Okay…?”
“Katya and I—my ex-fiancée—liked to work out together. To motivate each other. We trained together for a couple triathlons.”
Triathlon—that explains a lot about his strong body. I nod for him to keep going.
He scratches his jaw, then continues. “So the smartwatches were part of that. The tracking. We synced them. And we talked about all the triathlons we’d do as a married couple as well. We bought a house together, planned for the wedding in the early fall, and all. Sent out invites, reserved an event venue in the Presidio overlooking the ocean, ordered the cake—a three-tier coconut cake.”
My mouth waters. That does sound good.
“I had my tux, she had her dress, we were getting the RSVPs. But one night in late summer, about a month from the wedding, she was out of town for work. And I noticed her activity levels were spiking on the app. She liked to do Pilates classes, so it wasn’t so odd at first.”
The wheels in my brain turn till I figure out why it wasn’t odd at first. “But she wasn’t actually working out then?” I ask carefully.
“Not at the gym. Not at the Pilates studio,” he says, his tone brittle, laced with a cold edge. “Her workout was in a hotel bed. At four in the morning. With a guy she worked with.”
My heart aches for him. “Oh my god, Sawyer,” I say, since there are no good ways to learn your fiancée is unfaithful, but that’s a particularly sad one, since those watches were supposed to be for them. “I’m so sorry.”
He blows out a breath. “Yeah, it pretty much sucked…one hundred nuts.”
I smile lightly, appreciating his gallows humor, but then the smile vanishes, replaced by genuine concern. “And you had to call off the wedding? Well, of course you did.”
A resigned sigh comes next, then a nod. “Called it off. Canceled the venue. Said we were sorry to all the guests. Told the bakery we didn’t need the coconut cake after all,” he says, and there’s extra regret in his tone, like the cake was special to him in some way.
“Was it your favorite? Cake flavor?”
He turns his gaze to me, his eyes vulnerable. “Yeah. I was…really looking forward to it. All of it. But also? I really like coconut cake, and she’d said, ‘For you, let’s do the coconut cake, since I love you so much.’ And then I put the house we’d shared on the market. Did the walk-through. Handled the inspections. All of it on my own, even though we owned it together. Today, we signed the papers at the closing. That’s the end of the splitting up.”
“Oh god,” I say, my heart hollowing out for him. “That’s a lot.”