Chapter 5
Chapter five
Rowleigh
Idon’t know why I agreed to this.
No, I suppose that’s not true.
It was because Mika, with tears shimmering in her eyes in all her goth queen glory, begged me to do this right if I couldn’t be swayed from doing it.
Despite her professing to reject most social norms, Mika is a romantic at heart.
She wants to believe this can all work out for me.
That I’ll have one of those marriages on paper that ends up turning into something more, where we both fall madly in love with each other.
But that’s not going to happen, mainly because Geneiva has already found her person.
She’s madly in love with him, and he’s madly in love with the mob.
They might appear to be a strange match, but the one time I met and talked to her in person, I could tell she believed her feelings were the real deal.
I’m walking into a quaint little brick building on a busy touristy street simply because my daughter asked me to go for coffee earlier.
She’s never done that before. It’s amazing that I have any sort of relationship with her at all.
I’ve tried over the years and been stonewalled.
My ex-wife convinced me that my being around wasn’t good for Mika because if I couldn’t be there properly, I shouldn’t be there at all.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes at the glamourous, over-the-top wedding dress in the far window.
It’s sparkly, and it glitters as the sun hits the crystals.
The other windows all boast decor and photographs of destination places, elegant tables, flower-strewn arches, and a happy-looking couple clutching each other and smiling on a beach.
Their smiles are so bleached, and their pose is so awkward that I have to believe it’s staged. They’re probably little more than hired models. Is anything in this place real?
It looks small from the outside, but inside, the open layout gives the illusion of more space.
The huge windows let in good natural light, spilling over the displays of faux wedding cakes in the corner, the gold gilt frames on the gallery wall displaying more venues, enchanted forests, rocky mountain escapes, and happy couples.
The settee and chairs are antique replicas, but with their red velvet upholstery, golden carved legs, and sweeping backs, they’re impressive enough.
Glitz and glamour, the building screams, but trust us not to fuck up your low-key weddings too.
A bank of glassed-in offices line the far side.
There’s no one currently behind the front desk with the stone facade creeping halfway up and the backlit mood lighting behind it. I sweep my eyes around, feeling distinctly as though I’m stepping into a trap, though I can’t say why.
Right. Marriage of convenience. I did this to myself.
Mika begged me not to go through with it.
My daughter, whom my ex-wife shielded from me, the girl who grew into a teenager and was too busy for me no matter how badly I wanted to be there, and the woman I have no idea how to relate to.
She had coffee with me and cut through all the years and bullshit and straight up begged me to reconsider.
When I couldn’t do that, she swallowed her devastation and her tears and sent me a link to this place, encouraging me to plan a wedding I could be proud of because I deserved the best.
Mika wrote under the link that this place works magic and that I needed some. If this place were actually located in a cave deep in the bowels of the earth and inhabited by six-foot spiders that I’d have to lovingly caress eight times a piece, I would have agreed, just because Mika asked.
Maybe the place is magic because I get an odd pull in my chest. A feeling that something monumental is going to happen.
When I turn my head to locate the source of the discomfort, I lock eyes with her through the glass of her office.
The piano goddess.
Goosebumps break out on my arms, the hair on the back of my neck stands up, and my pulse skyrockets into something I can’t calm because I have no breath left to try and regulate.
Whatever tangled strings wrapped around us six days ago now feel like they’ve arranged themselves around my throat, and they’re cutting off my air supply.
It’s not that crazy that we should meet again. She did say she was a wedding planner.
I could have looked her up, but it felt wrong, so I left it. I had no real right to do what I did that night.
There’s a burning accusation in her eyes that says if she had the power to give me stubborn warts on the spot, she indeed would, including a rather large, nasty beast at the end of my nose.
She recovers before I do, stalking out of her office on towering heels, her hips swaying in a black pencil skirt.
She’s not even going to pretend she’s not riled.
Her shoulders and breasts heave under her light blue blouse, and at her throat, a choker with a little star rapidly winks as she swallows convulsively.
She stalks right over and doesn’t hesitate to grasp my arm.
Today, I’m wearing my normal businessman uniform of a tailored suit, but her touch scalds straight through all those layers of fabric.
I’m twice her size, but she has no difficulty in pulling me into her office.
The doors are glass, so there is zero privacy.
But she’s well aware. She points a threatening finger at me, silently demanding that I sit in one of the black modern chairs in front of her edgy modern desk.
She remains standing, her hands behind her back, but they’re balled into fists.
She’s radiating tension, though if anyone looked in here, they’d see what probably passes as a semi-normal meeting.
I mean, maybe.
Weddings get tense, don’t they?
“I know what you’re doing here,” she hisses, her eyes throwing ultra shade and quite a few wishful curses at me. In her mind, I’m a cheating, disgusting pig of an asshole. I fucked with her, and now the universe has distributed me right into her wrathful sphere so she can dish out justice.
“I can explain…” I realize this is what every single douchebag has said. Ever. But I truly can. “Just give me two minutes. Please.”
Her eyes flash, and they sweep outside the office while her jaw sets in an even harder line. “You have thirty seconds.”
I do my best to relate the details to her in half a minute.
She knows who I am. She read the story. Or rather, stories, because once the first news agency picked it up, all the other outlets, no matter how big or small, followed.
I was always okay with having money as long as I never became famous.
I have zero doubt who leaked the story. Geneiva’s father.
Suddenly, people care who I am when they couldn’t have given two rat’s behinds before. The past few days have been nightmare fodder.
When I’m done outlining my arranged, on paper only, I’ll only meet the bride maybe once or twice more in my life marriage, Bellatrix surprises me by letting out a gusty sigh and sinking down into the large black chair behind her desk.
She swivels once. Twice. Left. Right. And then she comes back to the center and nails me with a hard stare.
“You do realize this is the most messed up thing I’ve ever heard.”
I have my hair carefully arranged into the token, boring man bun at the nape of my neck, so people don’t even realize it’s all that long, but I ruin it by raking my fingers through it roughly. “Don’t be afraid to tell it like it is.”
She pulls a face, wrinkling her nose. “I’m not. Obviously. Aside from me feeling like an imbecile for not knowing who you were, how could you do this to yourself?”
Mika asked me the same thing, but she’s my daughter.
She has a right to question my choices. I was floored when she started to cry.
I had no idea she cared about me as anything more than a passing person who should have been in her life but wasn’t.
I have no excuse. Yes, it was complicated.
Yes, I believed I was doing the right thing.
Do I wish I could take it all back? Every. Single. Day.
This woman? Despite the weird connection we shared, she’s basically a complete stranger. I can’t believe the way she’s staring through me. It’s as if she can see straight through to the secret essence inside me. One I don’t even know exists.
“I don’t know what’s blinding you or what happened in your life to get you to this point, but just giving up like this seems like a piss-poor option.”
The whole it’s a good thing I’m sitting down because I’d definitely fall over if I weren’t thing definitely applies right now. “Excuse me?”
She crosses her arms and gives me a good hairy eyeball. “You can’t just assume life won’t get better.”
“You mean that I can’t discount love. What part of this being fake didn’t I make clear?”
“The part where you had a look on your face that says this is the easy way out for you. Once you’re technically married, you can remain faithful to the idea of it. It’s a nice out to never have to put in any work or any risk.”
“Shouldn’t you be angry at me for what I did? Or almost did?”
“I asked you to do that,” she says with a sigh, some of the tension bleeding out of her rigid posture.
“You were the one who talked me down. You didn’t do anything wrong.
It’s not fair of me to imply that you did.
I was shocked when I found out you were getting married.
I saw the story the morning after, and I couldn’t believe it.
It’s a touchy subject with me right now. Cheating, I mean.”
“I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I should have paid someone to look you up so I could explain myself.”