Page 38 of Love Her

“What…the fuck?”

Trevia looked up and over at that, to see where I was. “He’s a politician,” she said, trying to calm me. “It makes sense. They can’t have you coming in out of left field wanting to save the rainforest, or puppies.”

At the moment, the only thing I wanted to save was me. I frowned and hopped forward. The next clause said that any business I entered into after my marriage was considered joint property.

Including Corvo.

“Absolutely-the-fuck-not. Corvo’s mine.”

“That is what this says. That your 15% in Corvo stays yours.”

“So if I take Corvo publicwhilewe’re married, he gets a cut? Fuck that. No.” I started going through my purse until I found a pen, scratching those lines out.

Trevia shrugged. “The last one’s worse.”

“Oh God,” I muttered, while flipping there quickly. “A psychological review clause? Are you kidding me?”

Trevia gave me a look that said she’d helped my father break more than one contract with a boarding school before.

“Fuck, Trev,” I said, looking at her for any hope.

“I agree with you, this one’s particularly egregious. But basically, he’s protecting himself—and if you’re not doing well?—”

“He wants to med me.” It was a statement, not a question.

I’d been on meds before—a lot of them. I knew they worked—I’d seen their magical effects often enough on other boarding school girls—as long as you actuallyhadthe condition you were being treated for.

And seeing as my depression and mania were largely situational, based on my proximity to my shitbag-child-molesting-uncle—I might’ve needed therapy, yeah, but I didn’t need Prozac.

What I needed was my freedom.

And suddenly it felt like I was in a tunnel and the walls were closing in—a tunnel I’d been in before, repeatedly, one I’d always had to claw myself out of.

Except this time…Rhaim had left me some rope.

I felt the outline of the phone that was just for him in my pocket, and imagined him, at his farm, with his beautiful horse, in a barn on a sunlit day, his sleeves rolled up, showing off his forearms, as he made me a ladder—no, a set of stairs.

“Lia?” Trevia asked, resting a motherly hand on my knee.

“I’m good,” I said, settling back into the upholstery. I knew I could hold my shit together better now, than I had—and I knew how to lie to medical professionals. “I’ll sign.”

“You…will?”

“Everything except for the Corvo part. Yeah.” Because I didn’t intend to live in a world where this pre-nup was consummated.

If something happened to Rhaim—fuck his opinion on the matter, I’d make sure to take Marcus down with me.

“Okay,” she said, and then flagged the driver to make a turn.

The car parkedin front of a building I didn’t recognize with a dramatic stone façade and windows so dark they could’ve been portals to space. Trevia navigated us to a door with her folio in hand, and someone opened it up from the inside before she got a chance to knock.

And inside…was like getting on the Hogwarts Train.

We suddenly were not in Kansas anymore, or New York City—we were in some facsimile of a hunting lodge in Edwardian England. We were surrounded by a claustrophobic amount of rich, warm, wood, oil paintings of men standing in front of trains, and the air smelled like cigars.

I looked entirely out of place and had never been happier about it.

“This is the women’s entrance,” Trevia said, under her breath, as we both waited for someone to collect us.

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