“I've waited for two years for this, and I don't know if this will happen again. So, Rule #1—you're not allowed to use your official-record voice on me.”
“Um—”
“That's a great start. You don't sayumin court. I'll take it.”
He's being ridiculous, but it's also the kind of ridiculous that almost has my lips twitching.
“Rule #2—if at any point you want to bail, you saybailand I drive you home and we never talk about this again.”
I open my mouth, but of course he doesn't let me get away with sayingbailthis early.
“Rule #3—I get to ask you one question that nobody at the courthouse knows the answer to. And I'll go first to make it fair.”
Okay, I really have to smile now. His idea offairis obviously the kind that lawyers like him appreciate: it's advantageous to him, not to me—
“What's your ideal guy?”
Elliot asks it so suddenly that the answer just comes flying out.
“Not you.”
Elliot winces. “Ouch.”
I'm wincing at the same time, my hand already at my mouth. “I'm so sorry.”
“Your turn,” he says, and the wince has become a smaller version of his courtroom grin, brave and barely banged-up.
Oh, finally.
It's the very moment I'm waiting for—
“Ask me whatever you want.”
I forget what I was planning to say the moment I hear him ask that.
Ask me whatever you want.
“Sir, madam.”
The server is by our table, setting down the appetizers, and I'm so thankful for the distraction because right now, I can already feel myself fading and fading from the present...as the past draws me in.
Five months of dating Nate, and I'm at the treadmill in the private gym in his home, trying to catch my breath while also trying but failing to remember one important thing.
“Please remind me why I'm doing this again?”
These past five months have been the best time of my life. Nate makes me feel happy and cherished in a way I've never felt before. But at the same time, those five months have been the most exhausting. I've quit my job and said yes to being his wife when I found out that he's migrating, and I believed him when he said it's easier to take care of the paperwork if I'm his wife.
Those things, I easily got. But what I didn't understand was this.
Weekly classes of karate and twice-a-week lessons at the shooting range. A crash course on driving every type of vehicle there is. And then there's this: two hours daily of working out in his gym, and while I love how the last five months have made me look incredible in a bikini...
Nate straightens off the mirrored wall at my question. He's sweating as well, having done weights while I was on the treadmill. He's ditched his shirt a while back, and he's dressed only in his sweatpants. It's one of the few times I see him bare-chested, and honestly, it's hard to look his direction when he's like this. He's always beautiful, but he's even more beautiful like this, and—
Gulp.
When he's this close, it's so much harder to concentrate.
“You're doing all of this...because it's my idea of the perfect bride.”