Chapter 7
Elena
The penthouse suite feels cavernous without him in it.
I pace between the floor-to-ceiling windows and the white marble kitchen island, my bare feet silent against the cold stone, my most comfortable sundress swishing around my calves.
Harry’s downstairs handling some kind of business call — he’d said something about a property manager in Milan, if I’d heard him correctly.
But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m trespassing in someone else’s life.
My phone buzzes on the counter, and I snatch it up like a lifeline.
Ross:
So sorry I wasn’t able to make it yesterday. Got called to work. How was it? Are you okay?
I stare at the text, relief almost flooding me. At least I know my best friend isn’t dead.
Me:
Wish you’d been here. It was a disaster.
Ross:
Oh no. That bad? What happened?
Me:
George no-showed.
Ross:
WHAT??
Wait. Isn’t that a positive? You didn’t want to marry him anyway.
Me:
Would’ve been if I hadn’t had to marry his father instead.
Three dots appear, dancing along the bottom of the screen, then disappear. Over and over, I watch them dance, knowing damn well Ross is losing his mind on the other side of the screen.
Ross:
Please tell me you’re joking.
I snort and send through a photo my sister had taken during the ceremony. The dots do their dance again, and I tap my nails on the counter, waiting for a response that will hopefully make me laugh, make me feel better about this absurd situation—
Ross:
Jesus, Elena. Are you okay?
Well. That’s not what I was expecting.
Me:
I honestly don’t know.
Before I can type anything else, my phone screen fills with a photo of Sarah, the ringtone I’d selected specifically for her blaring out. I hesitate, wanting to keep talking to Ross in whatever time he has right now, but Sarah wins. She always wins with me.
“Hey—”
“Okay, I’m sorry, I’ve been thinking about this since the lobby earlier and it’s driving me insane,” she says, leaving no room for the standard pleasantries, her voice slightly breathless like she’s been running laps of her room.
“I have to ask. Did you actually consummate your marriage last night? Dad was talking about it all quiet with Mom when I got up. Is that seriously in the contract? Did you do it? I need answers.”
Heat floods my face. “Sarah—”
“Because honestly, El, if you did, I’m not sure if I should be, like, mortified or impressed. He’s gorgeous. Stupidly attractive for someone who’s supposed to be around Dad’s age.”
“He’s not that old,” I mutter, grounding the heel of my palm into my forehead.
Sometimes she acts as though she’s still the bright-eyed seventeen-year-old she’d been when I’d graduated high school and not the twenty-nine-year-old woman she actually is, and it never ceases to stress me out.
But I’ve spent my entire life shielding her from the bullshit Mom and Dad tried to hand us, and it would be a lie if I ever tried to say I wasn’t perpetually jealous of it. “And it’s… complicated—”
“Oh my god,” she chirps, the phone rustling like she’s frantically switching hands. “You did. That’s your ‘I don’t want to talk about this’ voice.”
“So don’t ask me about it,” I grind out, but I know damn well it won’t stop her, and it won’t keep me from answering. I’d bend myself over backwards for her.
“You know I can’t do that,” she laughs. “Tell me everything. No, wait, tell me nothing. I don’t know if I can handle details. But I need to know how it was. Oh my god, I can’t decide. Is he big—?”
“Sarah.” My voice comes out strangled, and I move, pushing off the counter and sinking instead onto the plush leather sofa, pulling my knees up as far as my breasts will let me. “I’m not telling you that.”
“Oh, come on.”
I don’t bother explaining that I literally can’t tell her that because I didn’t even see it — the man somehow wasn’t even concerned with his pleasure in the slightest. “I don’t know what to do, Sarah. Can we focus on that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, this whole situation is fucking insane.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, tucking my arms in between my torso and thighs. “He’s eighteen years older than me. He was supposed to be my father-in-law, Sarah, and now he’s my—” I can’t bring myself to say it.
The silence hangs until she fills it. “Husband,” she says carefully. Somehow, hearing her say it makes it feel far more real. “Breathe. You’re spiraling.”
She’s right. My chest feels tight, my lungs seizing just enough to make me feel like I’m back in that goddamn wedding dress, walking down an aisle with no groom at the other end.
“I just don’t understand,” I say, the words breathy and wheezing.
“Where the hell is George? How am I supposed to just wait around for him to come back just so I can get divorced and marry the right one? It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd.”
“Okay, okay, first of all, George is a coward and we know that,” Sarah says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Second, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to now.
The contract is fulfilled, right? You did the legal bit.
Technically, you don’t have to do anything else; you can tell Mom and Dad to go to hell and run away. ”
I snort. “And let the distillery go under? Yeah, no. You know what’ll happen if the families don’t merge.
Dad’s been leveraging everything on this — without the Highcourt’s distribution network and capital, we’re done.
You know damn well he’ll just marry you off to a shareholder or something to secure it at that point. ”
She huffs. “Then what’s the plan?”
I run my free hand through my hair, knotting my fingers in the strands.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Harry’s arranged for me to stay at his penthouse in Manhattan, he told me when I came back up earlier.
I can keep working if I do that, and I guess I can just stay out of his way until we figure out what happens next. ”
Sarah pauses, the line holding silent for a moment. “Stay out of his way?”
“Yeah.” I shrug, not caring that she can’t see me. “This is business. That’s all it is. I don’t need to be a genuine wife to him.”
“Business,” she echoes, her tone flat. “You expect me to believe you’re capable of keeping this business casual with him when he looks like that?”
My stomach twists. “Won’t be hard if I just don’t look at him.”
She snorts. “So you do agree that he’s hot.”
“Obviously,” I hiss, “but that doesn’t mean anything, Sarah.”
“Yet you’re calling him Harry when he was just Mr. Highcourt to you yesterday morning—”
“Because he’s my husband.” My brain short-circuits on the word, my tongue feeling heavy, like I’ve said something incorrect.
“Exactly,” Sarah says, and I can hear the shit-eating grin spreading across her cheeks. “Look, I know it’s insane, but maybe instead of hiding out in Manhattan, you could take advantage of your situation. Get to know him, see what happens.”
“Sarah.”
“I’m not saying fall in love with him—”
“Sarah.”
“—or fuck him every two seconds—”
“Oh my god.”
“—I just think you could stand to maybe live a little and see what comes out of it, since you were blushing up a storm earlier when you saw him in the lobby.”
“I’m going to crawl under a rock and die.”
“Look. Your life has never really been under your control, right? You’ve been doing what other people want you to since you were sixteen. You’ve been protecting me for longer. Maybe just think about what you want to do now that you don’t have as many constraints.”
Before I can respond, the sound of the elevator chiming just outside the door rings out. He’s back.
“I have to go,” I mumble.
“Okay, okay, just try to remember this isn’t the end of the world—”
“Love you, bye.”
I hang up before she can get another word in. The mechanical whirr sounds as the door unlocks, and then he’s there, standing in his button-up with his suit jacket clinging to a single finger over his shoulder.
He stops when he sees me on the couch. “You okay?” he asks, his gaze flicking over my calves before settling back on my face. His expression is stone, but the way he says those two words makes me think, for just a second, he might actually care.
But I wouldn’t know what to do with that even if I were given a full instruction manual.
I nod anyway. I’m not sure if he believes me.
————
An hour later, we’re sitting across from each other at a corner table in the hotel’s restaurant, the lunch crowd dying out around us.
Most of the wedding guests checked out this morning, but a few stragglers are around us, somewhat familiar faces seated at tables, distant relatives or family friends or business associates who stayed an extra few hours or a whole extra day.
And all of them keep stealing glances at us.
Harry had insisted we go down for food. Whether that’s because I wasn’t being exceptionally sociable upstairs or because he wants to keep up appearances, I’m not sure.
But as he cuts into his salmon with precise movements, his sleeves rolled up to reveal the strong lines of his forearms, I can’t stop staring at his hands.
My salad is lost to me. All that goes through my mind is the way they flex, the way they looked last night when he’d—
“You’re not eating,” he says, his voice quiet enough that it won’t carry. He sets his fork down.
I force my gaze back to his face. “I’m not that hungry.”
His lips purse like he’s able to see right through the lie, dark green eyes studying me. “Their staring is bothering you.”
I snort. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Want me to kick them out?”
“That’s—” Insane. Surprisingly sweet. Genuinely nice. “—not necessary.” I stare down at my plate, stabbing a bit of lettuce with my fork. “I just keep wondering what they’re thinking, is all.”
“That you married up,” he says dryly. His fingers knit together, his chin coming to rest on the threaded knuckles. “That I’m having a midlife crisis. That we’re both insane.”