Page 64 of Oxygen Deprived

And Naomi was right.

I had done that to her.

Despite the fact that I considered myself divorced, I technically wasn’t, and I’d taken her choice in the matter away.

She might’ve made the same choice regardless of whether I’d given her all the details or not, but the fact that I hadn’t given it to her was clearly upsetting her.

I hadn’t considered how she might view it

Yes, I’d known she was upset, but now that I looked at it from her point of view…

“Shit,” I muttered softly.

“Yep,” she confirmed. “If it makes you feel better, I told her to sleep with you again, but she told me she couldn’t do it until she was sure you were divorced.”

When we pulled up to Chili’s, I held back, waiting for everyone to go inside, and then I called my lawyer.

If she wanted me divorced, then I was getting fucking divorced.

She was worth it.

***

The papers were signed a few days later.

It would be official, and I’d spent damn near my whole life savings to make it so.

I felt not one single regret as I signed my name at all the flagged spots, then handed the papers back to my lawyer.

“She’s happy with the settlement?” I asked Todd Masterson, my lawyer.

“She’s as happy as she’s going to get,” he corrected. “I wouldn’t have given her what you did, either, and I’m willing to bet that she would’ve settled for a lot less.”

I nodded.

“I know,” I said. “I was hoping she wouldn’t balk this way.”

He nodded.

“Well, I would say she was quite happy. She knew it was going to happen, and she was just waiting for you to up the ante, so to speak. And up it you did. By way too much,” Todd muttered.

He hadn’t been happy about all the money I’d given Constance.

Not that I’d given it to her, per se.

It was all conditional. Something that I likely wouldn’t have accomplished if it wasn’t for Constance’s ignorance, and her haste in signing once she saw all the money I was throwing at her.

She had to spend all the money on living. She couldn’t use it to buy clothes or frivolities. She had to use it to pay her bills, or anything that had to do with Attie. She couldn’t just spend it wherever the fuck she wanted.

And if she broke the rules, she got it taken away with no chance on getting it back.

It also only stayed in her name for two years before it was transferred to Attie’s college fund. Once Attie graduated college, she’d get the rest put into a bank account which she’d get a stipend each and every month.

Although it wasn’t much, a measly fifty grand in the grand scheme of things, it was all the money I’d had to my name.

Now the only things I had left that were mine were the clothes in my house, my house, and my truck.

I’d be working for the next twenty years, and would have no chance at retiring any time soon, that was for sure.