Two minutes later, they’re both gone.
I turn back to Wendy and smile. “Hello, Mrs. Tate.”
She smiles back. “Hello yourself, Mr. Tate.”
There is no way to stop my wide grin. She bites her lip as I study her. She’s been through some shit over the past several days, but she’s here and she’s OK.
I walk over to her and collapse down onto the bed. She immediately grabs a hold of me and fits her body next to mine, her head on my shoulder, her fingers grabbing my t-shirt, one leg thrown possessively over my thigh. She lets out a long sigh. “We gotta stop meeting this way.”
It’s not really funny, but it really is funny. So I laugh. “That’s a sick joke.”
“Sick? How do you figure?”
“You know how.”
She chuckles a little. “Did you miss me?”
“Fucking missed the hell out of you.” I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. “I was really worried.”
“I swear, I’m OK.”
“We’ll talk about that later. Outside.” I look down at her and find her looking up at me. I’m not smiling now, even though I’m happy, because I’m still a little bit pissed about how this turned out. Wendy is smirking up at me like she’s got a secret. I can’t help it. I break and grin back at her. “What’s that look for?”
“I missed you too. We really gotta get together more often.”
I almost guffaw. “Yeah. That would be an alternative way to run this marriage.”
She chuckles in that cute way I love. “There’s nothing wrong with our marriage. It’s working, right?”
I shake my head and look down at her again. “You’re nuts. When you asked me to marry you last New Year’s Eve, this wasn’t what I was picturing.”
“Hold on.” She holds up a finger and resituates herself so she can look me in the eyes. “I didn’t actually ask you to marry me.”
I laugh again. “You literally said—”
“I said prove it. And you said, ‘How?’ And I said, ‘Marry me.’”
“And then I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
“No. You said, ‘Right fuckin’ now, Wendy. I’ll marry you right fuckin’ now. How do we do this?’ And your voice was all growly and shit.”
I roll my eyes. “And then you said Branson, Missouri.”
She snorts. “What? What’s wrong with Branson? It’s a halfway mark between your farm and my cabin. I thought it was a stroke of genius. We can meet up there every anniversary.”
“Beautiful, Wendy.” I stroke her cheek with the back of my hand. “Once this Donovan bullshit is over, we won’t be meeting up anywhere because we’re never gonna be apart again. And for the record, we’re done with Mount Pleasant too. No more Mount Pleasant.”
“No. Wendell will miss the fuck out of us if we stop meeting there. Our crazy love story is like the highlight of his life.”
“You know we’re gonna have to kill Wendell if he really does write that tell-all book about us.”
Wendy snorts again and I hug her tighter. God, I love her happy. There have been so many bad years, but this one—this year right here—this has been the best year of my life. Even though we haven’t seen or talked to each other since the end of our six-hour honeymoon in Branson, just knowing she’s mine now, mine for good, is enough.
“You are not the kind of man you marry, Nick Tate. You are not even the kind of man you date.”
I smirk. Because she’s remembering it too. Standing in that little chapel, empty except for us and the reverend, as we said our vows.
“You’re not best-friend material. You’re not boyfriend material, that’s for sure. And regardless of what you think, you’re never going to be husband material.”
I shake my head and laugh. “The look on that reverend’s face when you started talking—I died.”
She laughs too. “He was like… ‘What the fuck is going on here?’”
“But we did the whole thing with a straight face. I fucking loved that we did that.
Wendy reaches up and places a hand on my cheek and when I look down at her, the expression on her face is one of adoration. “We are like…” She pauses to think. “We’re like the world’s greatest liars. In fact, from now on this should be our title. Like our noble title. May I present to you, the World’s Greatest Liars, Nicholas and Gwendolyn Tate. It’s catchy, don’t you think?”
“Without a fucking doubt.” I point my finger at her, serious now. “But we never lie to each other.”
“Not if we can help it.”
I can’t stop the smile. Because, of course, if you’re married you should not lie to your partner. But everything has a caveat and we both know that. Sometime I worry about the lies she’s telling me, but then again, I’m not really worried. Because I only lie to her for her own good and she only lies to me for my own good. And we’ve accepted the fact that she knows what’s best for me and I know what’s best for her—so… in our sick Company assassin minds… this works. But I feel the need to remind her of the caveat. “Not if it’s for the greater good, you mean.”