14. Ronan
RONAN
I have the papers printed and ready before Cali is even awake the next morning.
Navi curses me out over the phone about it, tells me I'm handing back the only thing keeping her tied to me and that that is all a big mistake and I'm a moony-eyed moron going gaga for love.
I let him talk, tell him he's right, then tell him that I'll have his balls in a jar on my desk if the transfer isn't completed before nine.
By the time Cali comes down in her pink robe with her hair in a knot, the folder is sitting on the kitchen table.
I've moved the salt and pepper to make room for it.
I've made her coffee the way she likes it as well, too much cream, the sugar she pretends she doesn't want. All the little things she never thought anyone would ever see.
She sees the folder and stops in the doorway.
"That it?" she asks.
I nod.
Hesitantly, she sits, perched on the edge of her chair like she thinks a trapdoor might open up underneath her at any moment and plunge her into a pool of hungry piranhas. She must be the slowest reader in human history, but I force myself not to rush her.
There's not much to it, ultimately. Bradshaw Holdings has been dissolved, the founder's interest returned to her, and a new company reconstituted that holds every single scrap of IP and legal protection all filed under her maiden name. It's hers again. Always was, really.
"There's a pen by your elbow," I say.
She picks it up and signs. One quick loop of her name, and it's done.
But when it's done, she doesn't look particularly pleased.
She just sits there, staring at the paper.
"You okay?" I ask.
"Yeah." She sets the pen down. "It's mine again."
"Every piece of it."
She nods, but still, she doesn't smile.
"You don't seem happy," I observe.
"I got what I wanted." She slides the folder to the middle of the table. "I'm just not sure what wanting it was supposed to feel like."
I know that feeling. I've had it my whole life. You want a thing. You claw and scheme and bleed for it. Then you get it, and it just sits there, and you wait for the good feeling to arrive, but it never does.
"It'll feel like something later," I tell her. "Maybe not today. But later, when Mercer's gone and Lev's handled, when you're back at your desk doing the work you love. It'll hit you then."
"Maybe." She wraps both hands around the coffee mug. "Or maybe I'll just want the next thing."
"That's how it goes."
She looks up at me. "Is that how it is for you?"
I don't answer right away. I think about the yachts I named as a joke. The penthouse that looks like a magazine. The firm, the foundation, the money.
"Yes," I say. "For a long time, it was."
"And now?"
"Now, I want things I'm not supposed to have," I tell her. "Which is worse, I think. At least the old wanting was simple."
She holds my eyes for a second too long. Then she looks back down at the paper with her name on it.
"Okay," she says, and her voice changes, going brisk and all-business. "The wedding."
That's not the change of topic I expected her to reach for. "What about it?"
"I've been thinking about it." She scoots her chair in closer. The shutters in her eyes close down as she pins back her feelings out of sight. "We have to sell it. If Mercer thinks it's fake, it's worthless. Worse than worthless."
"Agreed."
"So we can't just show up and mumble our way through it. It has to look real."
"It will."
"How do you know?"
I look at her. "Because I'm going to make sure it does."
"See, that's not good enough." She points a wary finger at me. "That's you deciding it'll be fine and expecting me to trust you. We've established how that goes."
"Fair."
"So." She takes a breath. "We need to practice."
I set my mug down. "Practice?"
"Yeah. Like, dress rehearsal. The whole thing.
Where we stand, what we say. The…" She blushes.
"… the kiss. All of it. I'm not walking into a courthouse and freezing up because I've never done it before.
Think of it like a fire drill. So when the real thing happens, it's just muscle memory, and nobody watching sees two people who look like they'd rather be anywhere else. "
I keep my face still. This is a very dangerous idea, and she knows it. A fire drill. That's a great word for what she's proposing. Because if we do it wrong, something is going to go up in flames.
"Alright," I say. "Alright. We practice."
She blinks, like she expected me to fight it. "Okay. Good. Now?"
"Now's as good a time as any."
She stands up too fast and knocks her hip into the table. The mugs jump. She steadies them, and she's got a flush going up her neck that she's pretending isn't there.
"Kids are at camp until three," she says. "So. Now."
We move into the living room. She stands in the middle of the rug and looks around like she's trying to find her mark on a stage. But if there's a director alive who knows how to choreograph this scene, they sure as fuck aren't in this room.
In here is nothing but tension, angst, and a lot of bad ideas.
"Where should the officiant go?" she asks.
"In front of us. We'll be side by side, facing them."
"So we stand—here?"
"Here." I move next to her. Not close. A foot of air between us. Safer that way. "Shoulders squared to the front. You'll have flowers or something to hold, so your hands stay busy. That helps."
"I don't want flowers."
"What would you prefer then? A gun? Can of mace?"
She rolls her eyes. "Not funny, Ronan."
I suppress a smile. "No flowers then. Fine. We'll figure something else out."
She turns her head. "I don't know why I feel so flustered. I'm the one who's done this before." Something occurs to her and she looks at me. "Have you?"
"Been married?" I bark out a laugh. "No, Ms. Meadows, I have not. I've stood up in a few. Not my own."
"Right. Yeah. Okay. That's, er… Yes." She faces front again, cheeks flaming. "Okay. So we stand here. And the officiant does the, like, the whereas and the hereby and all that."
"Most of it, yes. There's a part where we speak."
She winces like she just remembered that bit. "The vows."
"A version of them. At a courthouse, it's short. You'll repeat after the officiant. You take this person, you promise the things, you say I do." I watch her out of the corner of my eye. "Simple."
"Simple," she echoes, like she doesn't believe it. Nothing about us has been simple from the start.
"The hard part isn't the words," I say. "It's the standing there. People don't know what to do with their faces. They go stiff. That's what reads as fake on camera."
"So how do I not do that?"
"You look at me instead of the room."
She goes quiet for a second. Then, "Fine. I look at you. What about hands?"
"When we say the vows, I'll take yours. Both of them." I hold my own out, palms up, not reaching, just offering. "Like this."
She stares at my hands like they might bite.
Then she puts hers in them.
They're cold and trembly, so I squeeze them for reassurance that's not really mine to offer. Then I remember I shouldn't be doing that. Gripping isn't in the deal. She sighs, almost sadly, when I loosen up.
"Then the officiant says their piece," I go on, "and you say your line, and then it's my turn, and then it's done. Rings, and then the—"
"The kiss," she gulps.
"We'll get to that."
Hurriedly, I let go of her hands, because if I keep holding them I'm going to forget which lines I'm allowed to cross.
She flexes her fingers like she's shaking off pins and needles. "Okay. Skirting right past the kiss. Onto the photo. There's always a photo."
"We'll need one," I agree. "Mercer will be expecting it."
"So we should figure out how we stand for it. So it doesn't look—" She makes a face. "—stiff. Staged."
"You'll be in front. I'll be behind you, a little. Hand at your waist."
"Show me."
I hesitate, and then I move behind her, resting my hand at her waist. Just my hand. Over the robe, light, barely there. She stiffens.
"Like this?" I ask.
"Lower," she says. "That looks like you're afraid of me."
I move my hand down, to the curve of her hip. "Better?"
"Worse in so many ways," she breathes, then shudders like she wishes she hadn't said that out loud.
I couldn't agree more.
"Now, we…" She turns her head to look up at me. We're closer than either of us planned, close enough that I can see the ring of amber around her pupils, and she loses the thread of the sentence entirely. "Now, we look at the camera," she finishes, quieter.
"Like this?"
"No. Don't look so angry. You're supposed to look…" She touches my cheek to rearrange my face into a semblance of a smile. "—happy. Or, no. Not happy. That'll look fake. You look like—like the way you looked at me at the aquarium. That'll do."
I don't say anything, because I don't trust what will come out.
We stand like that for a moment too long, my hand on her hip, both of us staring at a wall like there's a photographer in it. The room is full of everything we're not saying. It's so loud I can barely hear the traffic outside.
She's the one who breaks first. She always is, when it counts.
"I guess we should practice the kiss," she says. Her voice comes out at about half its usual volume, like she's hoping I won't catch it, or maybe hoping I will.
I don't move. I can't move. That's the trouble.
Even if you beg me. That was the promise. Neither of us can trust the other once the hands start reaching.
"Well?" she says. "Aren't you going to—"
"No." I hold her eyes in the imaginary camera lens. "I'm not."
Her brow furrows. "You said we'd get to it."
I let the corner of my mouth tip up, slow, because if I can't touch her then at least I can needle her. "But I made you three promises last night, Ms. Meadows. And the second one was that I keep my hands to myself. So if we're kissing… you're going to have to be the one to do it."
She turns fully in the circle of my arm to face me, which is a tactical error on her part, because now, there's no wall to look at and nothing between us but a few inches of hot living-room air.
"That's not fair!"
"Blame yourself. You're the one who wrote the rules."
"I wrote them expecting you to—" She stops.
"To what? Break them the first time it got inconvenient?" I tilt my head. "Not my style."
Her jaw does a marvelous little clench. She hates that she can't argue with it.
And underneath the hating, in the amber ring around her pupils, there's something that looks an awful lot like wanting, and it's directed straight at me.
I want to make it easy for her, but I won't. Not this. This one she has to choose.
"Fine," she breathes.
She goes up on her toes.
She's slow about it, agonizingly, criminally slow, close enough that I feel her exhale against my lips before I feel anything else. She hovers there. A featherweight. A rumor of a kiss.
Her nose brushes mine. I keep my hand exactly where it is on her hip, fingers going white with the effort of not gripping, not dragging her in, not doing every single thing I'm dying to do…
Then she closes the last half-inch.
It's barely a kiss. It's the idea of a kiss, the ghost of one, her mouth resting against mine as light as a moth landing—
And it detonates anyway.
I feel it go off in my chest. Her hand fists in the front of my shirt, and for one glorious, ruinous second, she leans in like she means to make it a real one, tongue and teeth and everything I've been thinking about since the dark hallway last night.
I don't move. I don't grip. I stand there and take it and let her have all the control. It's the hardest thing I have ever done in a life absolutely stuffed with hard things.
Then she rips herself back.
We stare at each other. She's flushed to the collarbone, chest going up and down, lips parted and slick, and I know, I know, I look no better.
"Okay. That'll do," she says.
In a relationship built on lies, that might be the flimsiest one of them all.
"Convincing," I manage to say. Mine's no better.
"Yeah." She lets go of my shirt. "Real. Yeah. That looked—that looked real." She takes a step back, then another, retreating toward the stairs, one hand pressed flat to her own sternum. "Muscle memory. Fire drill. Done."
"Yep," I agree. "Done."
"I have to—there's a thing. Upstairs. A work thing." She's already got a foot on the bottom step. "For the company. My company. That I own again."
"Of course."
"So."
"So," I echo.
She flees. Actually flees, robe flapping, socks skidding on the landing, and then a door slams shut.
I stand alone in the middle of the rug.
I take the small velvet ring box out of my pocket, where it's been the whole time, and I look at it, but I don't open it.
Then I sit down very carefully on the arm of the couch and wait, with a great deal of patience, for my body to remember the terms of the deal.