Chapter 13
PEYTON
I stand next to Liam on the threshold of his parents’ house, a colonial mansion with pillars that could’ve been airlifted straight from the Parthenon, feeling like an intruder.
I stare at the heavy front door, and its lion’s head brass knocker stares back at me judgmentally.
My mind is reeling, looping through the scripted lies we came up with in the last few hours.
The story we concocted is an elaborate web of invented missed connections and secret, long-distance yearning.
We cross-referenced trips going back five years—thank you, Instagram, for the timeline—and mapped out a series of wrong timing, wrong circumstances, different cities, excuses for why we never got together.
We don’t plan to share that I was supposed to marry someone else yesterday.
But should they find out and ask, our version is that when I got engaged to Matt, Liam stepped back.
He respected my choice even though it broke his heart.
But yesterday, my future narrowed down to one unbearable truth: that if I married someone else, I’d lose Liam forever.
I ran out of the church just as he was about to run in and not hold his peace.
Romantic much? And what a pile of bullshit.
The evening air is crisp, biting at the exposed skin of my neck, but I’m sweating. A cold, clammy sheen made of doubts. Matt will use this fake relationship as ammunition. He’ll claim I was cheating the entire time we were together.
Liam assured me we’re fine. The VanCamps’ lawyers can’t prove anything ever happened between us.
There are no phone records, photos, or any kind of digital footprint.
And if they bring us to court, we’ll explain our marriage with a partial truth: a chance encounter on Main Street and love at first sight.
It’ll make them look like fools. The rest is just for his parents.
But will they buy it?
Will anyone?
I stare down at my left hand. The diamond sitting on my finger is as real as the wedding certificate on my phone.
I can’t believe I’m married.
Liam produced the ring from a safe in his study—no big deal, only a priceless family heirloom passed down through generations—along with two plain gold bands he procured at the resort jewelry shop.
The ceremony, if it can even be called that, was very anticlimactic.
Since Missouri requires in-person filing for marriage licenses and the county offices are closed on Sundays, Liam pulled strings to get us married in another state—Utah, where marriage law has embraced the digital age with open arms and loose regulations.
It’s the Wild West of matrimony. Online applications.
Virtual ceremonies. No waiting period. The go-to state for people who need to tie the knot fast and don’t care for a trip to Vegas.
Even so, no government officials work on Sundays.
But Liam somehow convinced a county clerk to come into the office this afternoon to approve our marriage license.
I don’t know what favors he called in, if money changed hands, or souls were bartered, but within two hours of my agreeing to his insane proposal, we had a valid license.
Then he got a minister to officiate virtually from Utah via Zoom.
The balding, middle-aged man wore a quarter-zip fleece with a team logo and had a lanyard hanging around his neck—he looked like we pulled him from coaching Little League.
He married us, framed by a fake background of a tropical beach, while we stood in Liam’s study with Lila as our sole witness and guest.
It took less than five minutes. I didn’t walk down the aisle. We didn’t exchange vows, or even repeat the formulaic promises to have and to hold. With two simple I dos, the judge declared us husband and wife; the screen went black, and just like that, I was married.
It couldn’t have been less romantic if we’d tried.
As I stand on this porch, the little girl still in me, the one who fantasized about marrying a prince one day, mourns the loss of that dream.
Not that I wanted a fairy-tale wedding like the one Matt’s parents forced on me.
With all the bells and whistles, the princess dress, live band, and hundreds of hand-calligraphed invitations, that ceremony still felt as wrong as the Zoom shotgun option.
The only thing that matters for a good wedding day is the groom, and I still haven’t nailed that part down. Someday. With someone who makes me feel safe and loved. Cherished.
This is survival, I tell myself.
Except being this close to Liam doesn’t register in my body like mere survival.
He’s exchanged the geriatric golf club clothes for dark jeans and a charcoal cashmere sweater that looks soft enough to make me want to rub a cheek against. Over that, he’s thrown on a leather jacket.
A broken-in, scuffed thing that emphasizes the breadth of his shoulders.
The new outfit makes it harder to ignore how handsome he is. I tingle with hyperawareness of him. Of the clean, woodsy scent of his cologne—cedar with a darker spice underneath. Of the way he shifts his weight off his injured leg. Of how the strong line of his jaw is set with grim determination.
And then there’s me.
I feel inadequate in my borrowed outfit.
Lila raided her closet to save me from meeting the parents in the resort’s country club wear.
But her jeans are too tight at the hips.
She’s built like a dancer, and I’m built like someone who stress-eats her feelings.
And the sleeves of the fluffy sweater she gave me keep falling past my wrists unless I push them up.
I’m also several inches shorter. My hair is doing its usual chaotic thing despite my best efforts with a blow dryer. And the bikini is starting to chafe.
Liam turns to me, his gray eyes searching my face in the warm glow of the porch light. The shadows cut across his cheekbones, making him more handsome. More dangerous.
“Are you okay?”
I nod. It’s easier than explaining the cocktail of terror, regret, and inappropriate attraction mixing in my belly.
“You’re fidgeting.”
“Well, excuse me.” I scoff. “How are you this calm?”
He has to be nervous. This is his family.
His mother flew in from wherever she was—Paris?
Milan? Some other glamorous location where billionaire wives decamp for fall?
—to meet his surprise wife. The pressure on him must be enormous.
He’s about to lie to the people who raised him, present a stranger as his life partner, and bet his entire future on us pulling off this performance.
Liam ignores my question, but the muscle in his jaw tightens, then releases.
“You can do this.” His voice is confident; he sounds like he has absolute faith in my ability to lie like a pro.
Like he believes in me. He turns fully toward me, blocking out the rest of the world as his large frame creates an intimate shelter on the porch.
“You have guts. Most people would’ve gone through with the wrong wedding, played it safe just for the social pressure.
But you didn’t. You walked out and damn the consequences.
And then you went toe-to-toe with me when I tried to kick you out of my hotel.
You blackmailed me for a room. You’re fierce and strong.
My parents are nothing compared to everything you faced yesterday. ”
The praise is warm honey poured inside my chest. Hot goo spreading outward. Soothing, but also sticky.
Would he praise me like this in bed, too? Would he tell me I’m doing well, that I can take more, that I’m perfect?
I shove the thought down, my cheeks heating. This is not the time or place for my brain to go rogue. We’re about to meet his parents. I won’t go inside thinking about Liam’s bedroom voice.
“Thanks,” I squeak. “I’ll try not to vomit on the Persian rugs.”
“That would be appreciated.”
He steps closer. Too close, forcing me to crane my neck up to maintain eye contact. “Inside, I’ll have to be…” Liam pauses; that muscle in his jaw ticks again. “…affectionate.”
My pulse stutters.
That tingling awareness shoots down my spine, pooling low in my core.
Why is the idea not repulsive? It should be.
It should feel clinical, transactional. But hearing him say it, standing in the cold breeze with his cologne in my lungs and his shoulder almost touching mine, my body is responding with deeply inconvenient enthusiasm.
“That’s fine.” I twist the ring. It’s loose. I’m terrified it’s going to fly off my finger.
He must see panic or desire in my expression—or a mortifying combination of both—because his voice gentles. The commanding edge softens into a tender tone.
“Relax.” His hand finds mine, his fingers warm as they interlace with my cold, fidgety ones. “I’ll take care of everything. I’ll handle my parents and steer the conversation. All you have to do is follow my lead and not look terrified.”
And damn it, my traitorous brain supplies an image of Liam in bed, hovering over me in the dark, telling me the same thing in that low, commanding voice. Relax. I’ll take care of everything. Let me—
“Okay,” I say, strangled, cutting my thoughts off before they spiral further into inappropriate territory. I need to get a grip. To focus. To stop imagining my fake husband naked.
His thumb brushes across my knuckles, feather-light, and then he releases me and rings the doorbell.