3. Maren
MAREN
Livian has me pinned in the linen storage room because it's the only place in the resort without a security camera, and she has already taken my hand twice to look at the ring like it might bite her.
"Mar."
"I know."
"Honey."
"I know."
"You agreed to what."
"Li, I have repeated this story four times, can we please skip to the part where you tell me how to fix it."
"There's no fixing it." She holds my hand up to the bare bulb overhead, and the diamond catches the light with the kind of weight only old jewelry has.
It's not flashy. It's quieter than that.
A round stone in a thin gold band, the kind of ring a grandmother passes down because she meant it. "This is real, Maren."
"I assumed."
"This is family heirloom real. Men do not take this out of a safe for a prank."
"It's not a prank."
"It's an arrangement. A coercive arrangement, by the way. Have we discussed that part."
"He didn't coerce me."
"He threatened to fire you."
"He threatened to consider it."
"Maren Castellan, listen to yourself."
I lean back against a stack of folded duvets and close my eyes. The storage room smells like cedar and bleach. Somewhere down the hall, the laundry tumbler is thudding in that uneven rhythm I keep meaning to put a work order in for.
"Li. If I back out, my mother will know I lied. Everyone will know I lied. Pia knows, which means Pia's mother knows, which means by Sunday everyone in our zip code knows, and I will spend the rest of my natural life being the daughter who invented a fiancé."
"Or you can be the daughter who married a man who buys people."
"He's not buying me."
"He bought a week of you."
"For — Li, for optics. It's optics."
She gives me a flat look. "Sweet pea. Listen to me. When men like that put a ring on your hand, they are not putting it on your hand for optics. They are putting it on your hand because they want to see what you look like wearing it."
"You don't know him."
"I know his type. I have served his type at fifty weddings, and I am telling you, the ones who are cold in public are not cold in private. They are something else in private. And you, my darling, my sunshine, my marshmallow of a best friend, are not built for something else."
"That's deeply rude."
"It's deeply true."
"I can handle a week."
"Mhm."
"I can."
"Mhm."
"Livian."
"Wear the ring. Take notes. Don't fall in love with him. In that order."
The document arrives at 9:47 that night. I'm sitting on the edge of my bathtub with a glass of cheap rosé balanced on my knee, and my phone lights up, and the email is from a Mr. Sebastian Aalto, executive assistant, subject line: Pre-Engagement Logistics — Confidential.
I open it. There are bullet points. There are sub-bullet points.
Wardrobe to be coordinated; staff will be in touch.
Daily schedule to be confirmed by 7am the prior evening.
No social media posts referencing CR, the villa, or the Vance group during the week of residence.
No contact with the press, including locals.
Redirect all inquiries to Mr. Aalto. Personal phones use to be discreet in shared spaces.
Physical comportment in public to be consistent with the established narrative (see appendix A).
There's an Appendix A. I scroll. It's a one-page document titled Public Behaviors and it has phrases like natural physical proximity at appropriate intervals and responsive eye contact during direct address, and I drink the entire glass of rosé in one go.
I text him before I can think about it.
This reads like a noncompete.
The little dots appear instantly. Of course he's awake. Of course.
That's because it is one, in essence. Are you withdrawing, Miss Castellan?
You said Maren.
I did.
Then call me Maren.
Are you withdrawing, Maren.
I stare at the screen until the bath water goes cool around my ankles.
I think about my mother's face at the chef's table.
I think about Sienna already drafting an Instagram caption.
I think about Owen, who didn't believe me, and how badly I want him to be wrong about me at least once before we both die.
No.
Good.
That's it? Just "good"?
Good night, Maren.
I throw the phone into the laundry basket and I do not retrieve it until morning.
The next three days, I write him on flashcards.
Not literally him — the us. The story. The version of us my family will sniff at like dogs around a wet shoe.
Where we met: the lobby, after a complaint I handled gracefully.
(Livian snorts gracefully and I tell her to shut up.) First date: dinner at the chef's table, off-hours, after he came down to apologize personally for the noise of a renovation he did not, in fact, oversee.
Favorite thing about him: the way he listens.
Favorite thing about me, according to him: not yet decided.
I leave that one blank because I cannot, in good conscience, put words in that man's mouth. He'll have to fill that one in himself.
I practice the ring. I practice not playing with the ring. I practice answering to fiancée without flinching, which I do alone in my apartment, into the bathroom mirror, in increasingly ridiculous voices until I'm laughing so hard I have to sit on the floor.
My mother calls me three times that week.
Three. She has not called me three times in a single week since I had the flu in college.
The first call she wants to know if Cassian has any food allergies.
The second, what his mother's name is. The third, whether he prefers white wine or red, because she's having a case sent to the villa as a gift, and she would rather die, Maren, than send the wrong thing.
"Red," I lie. I have no idea.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, Mom."
"You sound sure."
"I am sure."
"Oh, sweetheart." Her voice goes small in a way it almost never does. "I'm so glad you're letting me in on this. I really am."
I sit on the floor of my apartment with my back against the couch and I press the heel of my hand into my eye socket and I say, "I know, Mom."
"I love you."
"I love you too."
I say it before I can hear how rusty it sounds.
Sunday I take the staff shuttle north along the coast road, and I'm the only one on it because no staff member, in their right mind, takes the shuttle to the private villa on a Sunday.
The driver is one of the regulars — Arnie — and he keeps glancing at me in the rearview like he's working up to a question he's been told not to ask.
"It's true," I say finally, because I cannot bear it.
"None of my business, Miss Castellan."
"I know. I'm just — telling you."
"Mm."
"You don't have to call me Miss Castellan."
"I always have."
"Right. Yes."
He drops me at the gate. The villa sits low against the cliffside, white stucco and dark wood, glass everywhere — the kind of glass that doesn't look like glass until you're up close.
I've never been past the front gate. Every staff member at the resort has, at some point, taken a guest up to this driveway and turned around at the keypad.
None of us know what the inside looks like.
A man in a charcoal suit is waiting at the door. Lean. Composed. Hair the color of wet sand combed back from a face that gives nothing away.
"Miss Castellan."
"Maren is fine."
"Sebastian Aalto. We've corresponded."
"You're the one who wrote the appendix."
"I am."
"It's very thorough."
"Thank you."
He doesn't smile, but something at the corner of his mouth moves, and I decide on the spot that I like him better than I expected to. He turns and gestures me inside.
"Mr. Rourke is on a call. He'll be down shortly. In the meantime, I'll show you to your rooms."
"My rooms," I repeat. "Plural."
"Your wing, technically."
"My — I'm sorry, my wing?"
"Mr. Rourke's wing. You'll be staying in it."
I stop walking. Cool marble under my feet, a salt breeze slipping in from the open doors at the far end. And Sebastian Aalto watching me with the calm, unsurprised face of a man who knew exactly where I’d break stride.
"He didn't tell you," he says.
"He did not, no."
"Ah." Sebastian gestures down the hallway, polite as a ma?tre d'. "After you, Miss Castellan."
I follow him because I do not, at this point, have a plan that involves running. Behind me, the great glass doors of the villa whisper shut, and the click of the lock is the cleanest sound I've heard all week.