Page 203 of Handsome Devil
She looked at me uncertainly. Like she still wasn’t sure if she could trust it when I was nice to her.
“Is it hard for you when Katie’s out of town?” I asked her.
She swiped her hand in the air like it was nothing. “Don’t even ask. I’ve been through it all before. It sucks, but I’ll survive. I survived an entire year of high school without her, more or less. I mean, I saw her evenings and weekends, but it’s not the same.” She shrugged. “It’s kind of shitty for me when she’s on tour, honestly. But I can hardly begrudge her all the overwhelming happiness she has with her husband.”
Something changed in her eyes then. Like that comment just reminded her of what she had with her own husband.
“Overwhelming happiness” didn’t exactly sum it up.
“I’ll go visit them on the road sometimes,” she added. “So, it’s not like I won’t see her.”
“Will you?”
“Yes. I do that sometimes.”
I considered that. “Maybe you’ll come to Toronto with me sometime.”
She eyed me. “Maybe I will. I suppose I should put in some face time with your family. You know, all those photo ops.” She sipped her drink casually.
“And you can visit Superior. I can take you to head office, introduce you around. Might be good for you. Make connections.”
“Sure,” she said, noncommittally.
“I know your heart’s in Vancouver, Devi. I’d never ask you to leave.”
“And your heart is in Toronto,” she said simply.
The fact was, when I looked in her eyes, I wasn’t sure that was true anymore.
But I just told her, “They had some candidates for me to take a look at. For the manager position at the agency. They had them lined up a while ago. But I kept stalling on giving them feedback, and while I was in Toronto I realized why. So, I told them I already found the perfect candidate. It only makes sense that it’s you.”
Devi blinked at me. “What?”
“I’m promoting you to manager. Effective immediately. So Lizzie can go back to her role as agent, and you all can finally have some stability there. You’ll be taking over in a few months anyway, and at that point you’ll have the power to do whatever you want.”
“Oh. Well… great,” she said, but I could tell it was not great. I’d put her through hell over the agency.
She probably didn’t even know if she could trust me on this.
And I felt like such a fucking dick about it. That I had what she wanted, what she wanted most in this world, and I hadn’t given it to her. I’d only agreed to give it to her in a few months. After I basically manipulated her into being my wife and then divorcing me.
I was starting to feel like I’d handled the whole thing like the devil she always said I was.
She’d made a deal with the devil. And I let her.
Before she could say anything else about it, though, some girls she knew showed up, and I let her drift away with them. I spent the rest of the party basically watching her across the room as I drank with my boys.
I could tell my friends were all impressed with my wife. Some of them told me so, but really, they didn’t have to. Devi was beautiful, accomplished, intelligent. She was sexy. She was confident.
Like I’d told her, she had a glow about her that people could sense across the room.
She’d always had it.
As Johnny put it so politely, “What the fuck is she doing with you?”
And that thing she’d once said to me, about going shot for shot with bikers? She held her own with Lex and a couple rounds of Double Jack just fine.
Honestly, this life looked good on her. But I supposed she’d had plenty of VIP invites in her life, between her career as a modeling agent and her best friend marrying a rock star.
