My Ex-Husband Cut Me Off to Win Me Back

The day I heard my exhusband was getting remarried, I found out he'd blocked my number.

After the divorce he kept paying for everything, let me raise hell, and cleaned up every mess I made.

So when the comments floating in front of my eyes said the female lead was about to take my place and my good days were over, I flatout refused to believe it.

After all, he had promised me himself, the day we signed: "Don't worry.

I'm not going to fall in love with anyone else." For the first time, I was the one who texted him. "You're getting remarried?

Is that for real?" All that came back on the screen was a red exclamation point. Chapter 1 I stared at that red exclamation point, and for a second everything in me went blank.

I thought back to the day Gage and I got divorced. I'd been lying back on the couch, and he was sitting beside me.

I was still acting the way I always had, one leg thrown over his thigh without a second thought, one stiletto hanging half off my foot, swinging.

Gage had his shirtsleeves rolled back off lean forearms, and he signed the divorce agreement. Then the lawyer pushed the office door open.

Calmly, Gage tugged the hem of my dress down. "Sit up." "Oh," I said. He glanced over at me. "You don't have to worry about the money.

I'll transfer it to you on schedule." The thing is, Gage and I didn't have children. That clause had never been in the agreement we signed.

But while we were getting divorced I'd pushed my luck a little and brought it up anyway. Whatever slipped through that man's fingers was enough to keep me living very well.

To my surprise, he agreed. I grinned at him. "Thanks, husband." The air went still for a beat.

I corrected myself without missing a stride. "Thanks, sugar daddyyy." And that was that.

I became Gage Barrington's exwife, and I moved out of the Barrington house up on the North Shore. Gage did exactly what he said he would.

The money landed in my account on time every month, and the newest pieces from every luxury label kept coming just as reliably, delivered straight to my door.

Even when I threw my weight around out in the world and got myself into something, I never had to go to him about it. Someone would report it to him immediately.

With money, with the people he knew, with pressure and with incentives, he made all of it go away for me. When I was married to Gage, when I was Mrs.

Barrington, I'd still had to sit through the older Barringtons picking me apart and keeping me on a leash, telling me I wasn't worthy of the name and couldn't be taken anywhere.

After the divorce, they had no hold on me at all. There was no law above me anymore. God, it was good. It was so good. A lot of people couldn't stand seeing me like that.

They couldn't make sense of it, either. They kept trying to introduce Gage to one woman after another, and he wouldn't take a single one of them.

He just went on indulging his exwife and paying for her life. There was never so much as a rumor attached to him. The Barringtons had run out of ideas.

And now, of all things, he was getting remarried? Without telling me first? I pressed my lips together. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

I went straight down to the Barrington Group building. One of the women at the front desk knew me, and she froze for a second. "Mrs.— Ms.

Corbin." After Gage and I divorced, the people around him never changed what they called me. They went right on saying Mrs. Barrington.

It took me protesting before they started saying "Ms.

Corbin." I cleared my throat. "I'm going up to see Gage Barrington." The other receptionist looked at me. "Do you have an appointment?" I frowned.

The one who knew me explained, "Ms. Corbin, everyone has to be announced before they see Mr.

Barrington now." Then she paused and added, "It absolutely isn't aimed at you." I didn't say anything. Funny how it felt exactly like it was aimed at me.

Chapter 2 "You never used to need an appointment…" I complained. I'd always taken the private elevator straight up to the top floor.

But I had no interest in making things hard for the front desk, so I nodded and watched her call the executive office. I couldn't help feeling uneasy. What if Gage wouldn't see me?

He had blocked my number, after all. A minute later, she nodded at me. "Come with me, please." I let out a breath.

She walked me to the regular employee elevator and pressed the button for the top floor for me.

It was summer, though, and the elevator was packed, and there was a smell in it I didn't want to breathe. I held my breath the whole way up.

When I got to the top floor, I marched for Gage's office in my heels and pushed the doors open.

He was sitting at his desk with a fountain pen in his long fingers, head down, signing a contract.

Behind him the floortoceiling window held the whole street, traffic sliding by below. Cold. Expensive. Untouchable.

I opened my mouth to lose my temper at him, to demand an answer. Then that red exclamation point surfaced in my head.

My nerve went out of me, and all I could do was look at him miserably. But I didn't make a sound, and he didn't look up. So I had no choice.

I inched my way forward, step by step, until I was at the edge of his desk. "Gage." I said his name.

He acted like he hadn't heard, the pen still moving through his signature in that smooth, beautiful line. I set my jaw and snatched the pen out of his hand.

The barrel was still warm from his fingers. Gage finally raised his eyes to me. "What is it?" "I hear you're getting remarried?

And why did you block me?" I got it all out in one breath and stared at him. He leaned back in his chair and answered only the first question, his tone flat. "What if I am?

What if I'm not?" My lips moved. "But you promised me…" Looking into those black eyes with nothing in them at all, I couldn't get the rest of it out.

Tears slid down from the corners of my eyes. Gage's fingers twitched. After a moment, he lifted his chin toward the tissues.

I scrubbed the tears away with the back of my hand, furious and completely at a loss. I'd been having too much fun lately to keep track of Gage's personal life.

If those comments hadn't started showing up, I wouldn't have had any idea where he stood with anyone.

Just then his assistant knocked on the office door, his voice coming through from the hallway. "Mr. Barrington, Ms.

Pemberton is here." The comments floated up in front of my eyes again. [Heh heh, the female lead has arrived.] [Look how white the side character's face just went.

She's definitely feeling the threat now.] [So what? Like the male lead would ever feel sorry for his exwife.] [Right, he only kept paying for her out of nostalgia.

He's probably worked it out by now. Why waste the rest of his life on a side character?] The pen slipped out of my hand and rolled across the carpet a long way before it stopped.

Gage didn't say anything. He didn't tell them to send Ms. Pemberton in, either. The office was completely silent. My head was a mess.

A few seconds later my mouth pulled down. "I haven't even said anything to you yet, and you're going to go see somebody else?" Gage looked at my redrimmed eyes, his lashes lowering to cover whatever went dark underneath.

His voice stayed as level as ever. "Laila. We're divorced." I went still. It was the first time. The first time Gage had ever reminded me of that fact.

All that indulgence after the divorce had almost made me forget— Chapter 3 —that he and I hadn't been anything to each other for a long time.

I stood where I was and stopped talking. Gage waited a few seconds. "Are you planning to stay?" he said evenly.

I took a deep breath and looked at him with everything I had, trying to move him. "It's just that you're hardly ever around women, and if you start seeing somebody without knowing what you're doing, I'm worried she'll take you for a ride.

As your exwife, I want good things for you, that's all." "Yes. You're my exwife." He held my eyes, and I couldn't hear anything in his voice at all. "Laila.

You're not my wife anymore." Like I didn't know that. Like I needed him to tell me. "Whatever you want!" I bit down on my lip, gripped my purse, and turned to go.

His assistant was standing outside the office door, waiting politely. I gave him a look. "Where's this Ms. Pemberton?" He hesitated. "Uh. Ms.

Pemberton is waiting in the visitors' lounge." I gave a cold snort. I had zero interest in going and getting a look at her. "Fine.

Tell your boss I wish him luck winning himself a brandnew beauty." His assistant had no answer for that. A few days later a friend of mine dragged me to a charity dinner.

Halfway through the evening she ran into other people she knew and went off to catch up with them. I sat in a corner with my chin in my hand, eating hors d'oeuvres.

It had been a long time since I'd gone to one of these, and I was bored enough to yawn. Then I happened to hear the two people beside me start talking about Gage.

And then I heard my own name. "So I heard the Barrington one has been spending a lot of time with the Pemberton girl lately." "Well.

He's finally willing to let go of the exwife?" "I heard the money's been cut off." "That can't be right.

Do you know how spoiled Gage let Laila get?" "Then she must have made him angry." "Honestly?

If I were Laila, I would go throw myself at that exhusband of hers and cry." "Wouldn't you, though.

Gage never hesitates about anything, buys out other companies without blinking, and then it comes to the exwife and he goes soft every time." "If you ask me, all Laila has to do is play sweet and act cute for him and there's no way Gage actually leaves her hanging." I kept listening without letting on, arguing with every word of it inside my head.

I hadn't made Gage angry at all. Since the divorce I'd never bothered him. I'd never even sent him a single message. How could I possibly have made him angry?

Although those last few things they said… Would that actually work? I turned it over, unsure. For the next half hour I kept scanning the room for Gage. And I actually spotted him.

Tall and straightbacked, his features cool and sharp, a cut above everyone else in the room. He had a drink in his hand and people packed all around him.

All I could do was hang back and wait. Luckily he didn't make me wait long.

Before much time had passed he got clear of the crowd, and a server showed him respectfully into the VIP lounge. I trailed him the whole way. It went easier than I expected.

Nobody stopped me. There'd been too many people around him before for me to get anywhere near him. Now the timing was perfect. The closed room was very quiet. Just him and me.

I cleared my throat and edged my way over to Gage a little at a time.

He was sitting back on the lounge sofa with his long legs crossed, looking tired and unbothered, his eyes resting on me without any weight in them.

I put a smile on my face and reached out carefully. When he didn't stop me, I let my hands settle on his shoulders.

I started working at them, keeping my voice down. "I have a bit of a temper, and I wasn't very nice to you before.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I know where I went wrong." Chapter 4 Gage lifted his eyes and looked sideways at me. Something moved at the back of them.

My confidence shot up. I looked at him earnestly, wide open, nothing to hide. "You should absolutely get remarried. It's your private business.

We've been divorced for ages, and honestly, I had no business coming at you about it." His brows drew together slightly.

I kept my momentum going and pulled the next part out of nowhere. "I mean, we were married once, that has to count for something, and I never even gave you a kid, which is really a shame.

If it comes to that, you could just raise me like a daughter!" The air stopped moving entirely. The silence went on and on.

Gage straightened up a little and shifted out from under my hands. My palms came down on nothing. I didn't care about that. I rushed to show him whose side I was on.

I was trying to tell him I was no threat whatsoever to whatever he had going now. I meant every word of it. "Because I'm not after your feelings.

I'm only after your money!" Dead silence. I don't know if I imagined it. It felt like the temperature around us was dropping fast.

Gage's thin lips barely parted. "You really do flatter yourself." I stared at him. The cold in his face got worse, and he stood to leave.

Without thinking, I grabbed his hand. "Gage, don't worry, I'll wish you well. I'm not going to be some poisonous exwife—" Gage looked down.

The pad of his thumb dragged across my skin like it hadn't meant to, and the shiver went all the way through me.

I kept going. "If you do get remarried—" "Laila, I'd really like to know," Gage said, cutting me off without any heat at all, "whether you care." "Of course I care!" I wailed. "If you end up with somebody, your new girlfriend isn't going to be okay with you sending me money!" He said nothing. "If it comes to that," I said, desperate, "I'll go and beg your new girlfriend." Gage let out a cold laugh.

He pulled his hand out of mine. He walked away and didn't look back. The next day I found out that every card of his I carried had been shut off.

Even at the private club I went to all the time, I couldn't put anything on his account anymore.

The bottles he kept stored there, the expensive good ones, wouldn't be opened for me either. I stood there frozen.

The people who never missed a chance to go at me were delighted. "Well, well. What's going on here?" "Exhusband's done with you, Lai?" "It was always going to happen.

Who keeps paying for an exwife forever? This day was coming." I didn't give them anything. I put it on my own card, which hurt, and started drinking alone.

When she saw the look on my face, a friend of mine, one of the real ones, sat down next to me. "Don't be so upset, Lai." I choked out, "The bank I could swipe forever is gone.

You wouldn't be upset?" She didn't have an answer for that. She thought about it and poked me. "Have you seen yourself? How could you possibly be short on men?

Let me set you up with someone.

He might not measure up to your ex, but I promise you he'll have money." I said, half to myself, "Is there really anybody left in this world like Gage used to be?

Dumb and loaded?" "…Dumb?" she said. "Gage?" She was quiet for a second, then patted my shoulder. "So go meet him. If you don't like him, that's the end of it.

What does one meeting cost you?" I knocked back a few more swallows. The burn brought my eyes to the edge of tears.

It was strong enough that my head started to go loose, and I threw out a hand. "Fine!

I'll meet him!" She gave up, took the glass away from me, and got me on my feet. "Let's get you home first.

When you've sobered up we can—" Chapter 5 She stopped midsentence, her eyes catching on something. "Okay, that's lucky.

The guy I want to set you up with is right over there." I narrowed my eyes and followed where she was looking.

There were a lot of people over there. "Whwhich one?" I asked. "The one in the black shirt," she said. "Got it!" I floated off in that direction on very unsteady feet. "Wait, Laila—" I locked onto the black shirt. "Hi there, handsome.

Want to get to know each other?" Then my left foot caught my right one, I stumbled, and I went straight into his chest. The man didn't move. He let me hang there against him.

He didn't even put out a hand to steady me. I got a grip on the hem of his shirt, got my own feet under me, and complained, "You were supposed to catch me.

She's not setting me up with a very good one either. I'm going to make her swap you out." A faint smell of cedar filled my nose and closed over me. That smell.

Pressed against his chest, I looked slowly up. And met a pair of eyes I knew, cold as they had ever been. I'd had too much to drink and my head wasn't working