Chapter 5 #2
She snorts. “I would have thought you were a dirty stalker then.” She folds her elegant hands with those lovely, talented fingers across her desk.
“By all accounts, this marriage is a business transaction where the bride’s father gets the perks of washing his hands off his poor daughter, who wouldn’t conform to his medieval notions of what a woman should be.
You were a fool to agree, but in a way, you’re also her hero.
You’re her white knight because now she gets to live her life the way she wants, with the love of her heart.
All it’ll cost her is her name on a piece of paper.
She has her reasons, but what are yours?
And don’t say greed or a whole empire at your fingertips because you don’t strike me as the kind of person who doesn’t know when enough is enough. ”
This is…interesting. Also, what the actual fuck?
“I don’t think you’re qualified to know what kind of person I am.
” I try to say that lightly and not like a total douchebag.
“I’m probably just another greedy, selfish bastard who has no clue when enough is enough because nothing will ever be enough to fill all the black holes inside my black heart. ”
“Black holes, maybe.” She starts drumming her nails on her desk.
It should be annoying, but I’m momentarily captivated by the cadence of her fingers.
All I can see is her sitting at that piano and caressing those keys into the most beautiful form of magic I’ve ever witnessed.
“But greedy? I don’t think so. When did you give up on living and loving your life?
When did you decide to throw it all in and live for the legacy, titles, and status?
You’re hiding behind them. That’s not who you are. ”
This would be the right time to say something insightful and relevant, but for the life of me, I’m too flabbergasted to come up with anything.
All I can do is shift awkwardly in this chair.
Belatedly, I realize I’m sweating and stuck to the faux leather, such that when I move, the chair makes a fart sound.
I stare Bellatrix down like it didn’t just happen.
Bellatrix what? I glance around her desk and office for anything with her full name, but there’s nothing.
“When did you start going through the motions instead of actually living?” she continues.
“I…that isn’t what is happening here. The man you saw in the lounge?
He wasn’t real. This is the real me. I have my money, my properties, my hotels, my cars, my things.
I’m very much materially motivated. Those things matter.
Relationships? People? That’s messy. I like things neat and orderly.
I’ve gone to great lengths to cut out anything and everything that doesn’t fit neatly. ”
She yawns like I’m boring her. “If you’re done bullshitting now, let me tell you something.
There are good people in the world. People who could be right for you.
People who care. People who won’t take more than they give.
People who aren’t in it just for the money.
People who are loyal and want to know you for you.
Why throw away all the years ahead of you where you could find that and have it?
Just because things went wrong in the past doesn’t mean they will in the future. ”
“How do you have any idea things went wrong in the past?”
She lifts a shoulder in a shrug, but there’s a momentary flash of panic on her face. “First of all, the internet. Second, I plan a lot of weddings. I know love, and I know people. I’m not wrong about this.”
I know what this is. She’s so shocked about everything that happened that she has to rationalize it in her mind.
She’s so surprised that the surprise works against the surprise, showing an equal and opposite reaction of somehow spinning this into a story where I’m not the bad guy, and I should have hope.
And there might be a good chance that what I just thought out is pretty much pudding-clad proof that I know nothing about science.
“Villains always cloak their evil in a beautiful exterior. It’s their superpower.
But you’re not cloaking anything except for what you truly want, and it’s not villainous at all.
It’s not wrong to believe in love, even after the pain has proved you shouldn’t.
” She gives me such a bold look that a shiver traces down my spine.
I have never in my life given anyone googly eyes, but I think that’s what I’m doing here.
“If I can make you believe that life is worth living, and it can be absolutely great, will you call off the wedding?”
“I know life is worth living.” I make a sort of growl low in my throat that is nothing short of defensive. She ignores it, shooting me a grin that makes my stomach cramp like I just consumed ten tacos.
For my not-so-sweet sixteenth birthday, friends in high school took me out.
The night rapidly turned into an eating contest. I managed to get thirteen tacos down.
In the back alley behind the taco joint, about half an hour after the last one, they all came up, but it felt more like eighty-four and not thirteen.
To this day, I cannot even look at a taco without wanting to throw up a little in my mouth.
“You don’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be locking yourself into a contracted marriage for the sake of business.
I’m sure the deal could have been done without that side bit thrown in, yet you still agreed.
If it couldn’t have been done, then you should have told that guy to go fack himself.
Except, you know, not fack.” She glances around her office, her eyes sweeping to the glass walls like all her coworkers have magically appeared and are pressed up against the front of it like kids in a candy store.
I half expect to see a full stampede fogging up the glass, but when I turn and look, my nape prickling at being so exposed in here, there’s nothing.
And it’s not the glass that makes me feel stripped down.
It’s this woman with her huge eyes, innocent expression, and total lack of a filter.
It’s her wild proposition, and it’s most definitely the way the universe dropped her into my life.
I haven’t stopped thinking about her for a second.
It’s the way she should, by rights, want to nut-punch me so hard that I have to talk in falsetto for the rest of my days.
But somehow, she’s offering me this magical alternative as though she’s a clairvoyant or maybe a fairy, and she was set directly into my path to divert me from disaster.
“You’ll plan my wedding?” I pretty much choke out. She’s the last person I should be asking, but the silver lining is that at least I don’t ask her if she’s human and not fey. Or selkie. Or a unicorn.
Hey, it could happen. Probably. Maybe. There are so many things out there in the universe that we don’t understand.
“I’ll plan for you the best-darned wedding anyone has ever seen, but only if you agree to my terms.” A sly smile curls over her lips, but it bursts into a beautiful full grin that shows off her slightly crooked eyeteeth.
She looks so alive and so animated, all while sitting still, that rather inappropriate parts of my anatomy think it’s a great time to test drive their awakening.
I shove my hands over my lap while Bellatrix studies me with an intense, unwavering stare.
She’s only voicing what I just implied.
I could choose someone else. I should choose someone else.
Anyone else. I should be hightailing it out of here, away from these weird coincidences and her massive hazel eyes.
They were swamped with sadness the night she walked into the lounge and played the most beautiful music I have ever known, but now they’re dancing. Alight. Otherworldly.
“If I don’t agree, are you going to hex me?”
She frowns.
I frown.
Where the hell did that come from?
“I’m afraid I don’t know any hexes. My skills extend solely to helping people join their lives together, not ruining them.
And if I did know of anything or anyone who could do that and do it properly, I wouldn’t be hexing you.
I’d be calling up your poor fake fiancée who is in love with someone she can’t legally marry or have the world acknowledge without her family disowning her, and I’d get them to work some magic on her overbearing father. ”
“How do you know he’s overbearing?” I’m starting to get a weird feeling about this.
Not starting.
Rather, it’s intensifying.
She quirks a brow. “Do you really need to ask that?”
Right, okay. The what the fuck look she’s giving me is well-earned. To her credit, when I got into this office, she sat through my entire explanation without giving in to the urge to grant me one of those, though I’m sure she had to want to. Badly.
I want to give myself a what the fuck look now that I’ve had to explain it a few times.
Bellatrix opens up a crisp white file folder that she produces from the cupboard behind her desk. In it is a blank contract.
“Are you giving me total creative freedom?” she asks, one brow raised.
In this? Or in everything?
I know why I agreed to the wedding. Bellatrix isn’t wrong about a single thing she said. But why am I agreeing to this? I have no motivation other than that…
I want to.
And I haven’t done something I truly wanted to do for a very long time.
Especially when it’s dangerous, off-limits, taboo, and roughly half my age.
She said to experience life, not go out and ruin mine. She said to live, which involves making mistakes and messes. She didn’t imply that she’d want a repeat of what happened in the lounge that night. There was no innuendo in her eyes.
She said to live.
Have I ever really?
I flip the contract to the set of blanks on the last page.
“Don’t sign that yet. I said I’ll plan your wedding, but my terms are that you give me a chance to prove to you that you can be happy if you don’t do this.”
I frown. “You want to make the wedding succeed all while making it not succeed?”
She nods with every ounce of confidence, as if both of those things can happen at the exact same time and make perfect sense.
“The chance can’t just be one chance. It has to be three,” she says.
“Like three wishes.”
“Yes, but the ones you aren’t sure about and then find were the best thing that ever happened to you, not the ones you hoped like crazy for and then regretted ever having that hope come true.”
This is crazy.
Crazier than a fake marriage.
“Why would you do this for a stranger? Even if I were a client, it’s counterintuitive to your job.”
She stares steadily back at me, doing her soul-seeing thing that really brings out the green spokes in her eyes. “You gave me two thousand dollars, and you didn’t expect me to pay you back. I was a stranger. Even if you wouldn’t miss the money, it was a big deal to me.”
This is all so bizarre that I can barely wrap my head around it, but I know one thing. I want to see this woman again. Wants don’t usually land very high up on my list of important things in my life. Needs come first, and my needs always involve logic.
Why the hell am I grasping the pen, touching it to paper, and scrawling my name on the line at the bottom of the last page?
I even write down my personal phone number and pull out my credit card from my wallet with a slight tremble in my hand that I can’t pretend isn’t there, just like I can’t pass off the shiver of excitement that wraps around the back of my neck.
“You have an unlimited budget to make this happen,” I tell her.
The wedding.
And maybe the other stuff too.
Even if there shouldn’t be anything else.
Wants and needs. For once, I’m giving in to both.