I’m temporarily taken aback by the fact that Kathleen has said the word fuck. I wasn’t even sure she was aware of its existence, let alone able to produce it from her good, Catholic lips. Of course, we’ve done the deed countless times, and in less than Christian positions, but…

Wait, what the feck is this?

A napkin. She is holding a napkin. The napkin.

The contract.

I snatch it from her hand and mentally kick my own arse for not putting it elsewhere when I arranged our nightstands by the bed. She must’ve gotten them mixed up and opened it to take out one of her gazillion hand creams, finding this instead.

“It’s nothing.” I shove the thing into the back pocket of my suit pants. Kathleen’s eyes are two big planets, pregnant with misery. She slaps my chest, then covers her mouth, her face twisting in anguish behind her hands.

“You two had a deal?”

“She doesn’t want me,” I say—a spur-of-the-moment reaction and definitely up there among the dumbest things to say to your newly wedded wife, who by the way, is also heavily pregnant.

But in my mind, I know this is the most efficient way to assure her the napkin means nothing.

Which, clearly, is also a massive problem.

The napkin shouldn’t mean anything, but not because Rory buggered off to another continent to shag other people and take pictures of them and write on the back of those pictures how much they suck in bed and in life and in small talk. (I’m paraphrasing here, of course.)

The napkin shouldn’t mean anything because I’m about to have a baby with my childhood friend, turned lover, turned wife.

Yes, arsehole. Wife.

I advance toward my wife. My patient, saint-like partner who groaned and took it when I called her something else again and again and again for months.

“We both moved on. And we are married, in case you failed to notice.”

I clasp her arms, draw her close.

She pushes me away. “Get rid of it,” she barks.

I let out a dark chuckle. “What?”

“You’re not deaf, Mal. Get rid of the bloody thing. It shouldn’t be in the house in the first place. I cannot believe you.”

She cannot believe me?

Can I believe her? After she fecked me when I was half-dead and a quarter functioning? Making me take her virginity, and coming back to ride my cock, always begging me not to wear a condom?

Calling Mam, manipulating her and Bridget to pressure me into this marriage, convincing Mam and Elaine to move in together?

But I’m not dumb enough to start a massive fight on our wedding day.

I smile instead. “It’s just a silly memory. I’ll tuck it in a photo album. You’ll never see it again, and we can move on with our lives.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”