Page 48 of Cruel Kiss

"Yes."

I close the folder, knuckle the crust of my eyes, and then I open it again, like the date might change. Obviously, it doesn't. "I'm divorced. It's done. Todd's gone, the marriage is over, it's legally,officially, actually over, and you've been sitting on the piece of paper that says so for a whole entireweek?"

"Calista—"

"Do you know how long I've been waiting for this?" I jump out of my seat. "Do you have any idea? Months! This is the thing! This is the whole thing I've been fighting for since a scale in Phoenix told me my life was a lie. And you had it in your possession, and you didn't even tell me?"

"I know."

"Stop saying you know!"

"But Idoknow." He's the same calm Ronan as ever. "You're right. I should have given it to you the day it came through."

"Then why didn't you?"

When he doesn't answer fast enough for my liking, I slap the table with both hands.

"Ronan! Why didn't you inform me aboutmy own divorce?"

He drags his eyes up to mine once more, but this time, they're swimming with deep ocean blue. "Because the moment I hand it to you, you're free. Legally. There's no reason for you to be tied to me at all anymore. And the moment you're free, you might use it to be free ofme."

I sit back. "So you kept it to tether me at your side. Like your little pet."

"No."

"That's exactly what you just described, is it not?"

"That's part of it, yes. But it's not the whole of it." He scrapes a hand over his jaw. "There's a reason I'm giving it to you now. Tonight."

"Which is? Aside from the generosity of your magnanimous soul, of course."

"Because I need something from you. And I can't ask for it while you're still legally married to another man."

I stare at him. "You need something from me. You. Need something. Fromme." I laugh hysterically, not caring that I sound like the evil witch fromHocus Pocus."That's rich. That's so rich, Ronan. After everything. After the company and the trackers and the mirrors and the spy babysitter you planted in my house, you sat on my divorce for a week because youneed something from me?Well, tell the class, please! What could you possibly need from me that's worth hiding the one thing that started all this shit?"

He looks at me for a long moment. There've been a lot of long moments of prolonged eye contact like this since Ronan Akov first strode into my life, but this one somehow feels like the most eternal. I live and die a billion times over in the seconds that tick past. As those ocean-blue eyes of his burn and seethe and churn and deepen. When he speaks, I realize why.

"I need you to marry me."

I short-circuit. That's the only word for it. The whole world glitches out, buffers, and resets. I have to dig a finger into my eardrums to clear them out and make sure I didn't get that very badly wrong.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I think I'm having a stroke. Say that again."

"I need you to marry me,kotyonok."

"You—" I plant both hands flat on the table now, because my spine can no longer be trusted to keep me erect. "At the risk of sounding like a broken record, because the Lord knows I tell you this quite a lot, this is proof that you are in fact insane. Congratulations, you've finally lost it. I've been waiting for it and here it is. You want me tomarryyou. The man who stole my company. Twenty minutes after handing me the divorce from thelastman who stole my company."

Unmoved, he nods. "Yes."

"Give me one reason. One good reason that isn't you being out of your mind, specifically."

"Spousal privilege."

I stop.

"There are two parts to it," he explains. "One says the government can't force a spouse to testify against the other. The other says confidential communications between spouses can't be used against them. Mercer can subpoena me until she's blue in the face. She can subpoena you, too. But she can't make a wife testify against her husband, and she can't touch anything you and I said to each other after the wedding."

My legs join my spine in protesting against gravity. Both force me to sink back into the chair at the kitchen table.