Seale the Deal (Seale Twins Duet #1)

Prologue Wrenley

Prologue

Wrenley

The night I decided to move to Alaska started with me pouring a bottle of very expensive red wine into a mermaid-themed sippy cup.

This was not a lifestyle choice. This was a consequence of living in my last remaining friend Kay’s kid-centric condo in the suburbs of Vancouver because I stopped sucking my boss’s cock.

Also not a choice.

He decided the new administrative assistant was better at both sucking off and sucking up.

Which felt unfair, considering I’d spent eight years loving him through often less-than-satisfying sex. The man wasn’t badly equipped. He was just kind of selfish in bed.

Look, if orgasms were the foundation of a lasting relationship, straight women everywhere would be doomed.

But I hadn’t stayed because the sex was good. I stayed because together we felt unbeatable. Me, an ambitious designer with talent to burn. Him, a bold business executive with creative solutions to mundane problems in the fashion industry.

He promised me a future as bright and colourful as a Versace runway.

Turns out the man lied as easily as he breathed, and now I’m left with a broken career and permanent Cheerio marks on my thighs.

I set the sippy cup and bottle on the coffee table and set up my phone for the only thing that has been holding my sanity together since my entire life imploded: my weekly video call with my best friend, Remi Seale, where we get sloppy drunk and watch 90 Day Fiancé like it’s the therapy I can’t afford and probably need.

The call comes in as soon as I sink onto the couch, brushing aside a scatter of more crushed Cheerios Kay’s child must’ve been eating earlier. Proof I now live in a toddler’s kingdom, and I am very much a guest.

The bright blue eyes of my best friend light up the screen. Her long blonde hair is tied up in a topknot, her Taylor Swift–inspired winged eyeliner on fire as always. She blows her bangs out of her eyes.

Wrenley! She narrows her eyes. What’s with the cup?

Only clean one I could find. I take a sip, but there’s something incredibly unsatisfying about wine filtered through cheap plastic.

Your life has gotten very sad since you left your job.

Fired, I correct. I was fired.

It’s not that Remi doesn’t know this. It’s that I can’t stop repeating the sheer absurdity of how my job ended, like if I say it enough times, it’ll finally make sense. I didn’t expect to be in my mid-thirties, suddenly radioactive in my industry and essentially starting over from scratch.

Actually, less than scratch. Scratch implies there’s somewhere left for me to go, and my ex made sure there isn’t.

Apparently, getting fired from one of the biggest fashion companies in Canada after sleeping with the CEO makes you not fit for hiring, I add.

And somehow simultaneously overqualified and underqualified for everything else.

You know, I even applied at the diner down the street.

A mouse literally ran across the floor while I was there, so, what?

A rodent can work there, but I’m unemployable?

I don’t think the mouse works there, Remi says. This isn’t Ratatouille.

That’s not the point.

Then what is?

I blow out a breath. The point is, I didn’t spend eight years clawing my way through one of the most brutal industries in the country just to end up serving pancakes in a rodent-infested diner.

Remi’s face gentles.

I’ve been considering moving to Montreal, I admit.

Her eyebrows shoot up. Isn’t that on the other side of the country?

I nod. There’s a theatre there looking for a costume designer. The pay is terrible, and the contract’s only six months, but at least it’s still design work. And Quebec doesn’t care nearly as much about Vancouver fashion politics. Or at least I hope not.

And if that doesn’t work?

I bite my lower lip, because this is the part I don’t even want to think about.

London, maybe, I say. Or New York. They both have incredible theatre scenes, but the visa sponsorship process is brutal, and I barely have enough money left to survive another few months here, let alone move overseas.

Remi doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she gives me that look that’s equal parts concern and restraint. I’ve seen it before. It’s the face she makes when she’s trying very hard not to bulldoze someone with her opinions.

She’s a wonderful person. Big ideas. Relentless momentum. It’s how she built her writing career into what it is now. But it also means she sometimes believes that because she can steer her own life in the right direction, she knows exactly how everyone else should steer theirs too.

Sometimes, it’s helpful.

Other times, it’s a lot.

The show’s starting, Remi says finally, and I know it’s a convenient way of not talking about the idea of me moving even further away.

I let it go.

Long-distance best friendships have the same unspoken rules as long-distance relationships.

You don’t talk too much about the distance or how weird it is to love someone you mostly exist with through a screen.

You focus on what works, which is ninety percent Reels being sent back and forth and ten percent calls and texts.

Two years ago, Remi slid into my DMs, complimenting my fashion sketches and asking if I did character art on the side. I didn’t, but somehow, we kept talking anyway.

We met in person three times over the next two years.

Once when she came to Vancouver for a reader convention, once when I flew to Seattle and we drove to California for fun, though somewhere around Sacramento, we had a blow-up fight in a Taco Bell parking lot and managed to come out of it with gorditas and a stronger friendship, and finally when she convinced me to spend four miserable February days in Alaska for the experience.

And those four days were where I first met Ruger.

Though it’s hard to remember much else about the trip, considering I spent most of it in survival mode.

But I remember Ruger. The handsome, rugged, bearded mountain of a man Remi calls her twin brother.

If it weren’t for the increasingly heavy winter gear he handed me on a daily basis, I probably would’ve died.

Despite the fact that he and Remi bicker almost non-stop when they’re together, it’s clear he has a lot of love for her.

At one point, Remi was telling us about a book signing she was at where some man came up to her table and started accusing her of being part of the cause of the male-loneliness epidemic, and he had plenty to say about that guy and why he was lonely.

It told me a lot about who he is as a person, and I liked that he’s a man who is unafraid of feminism.

As for Remi, despite thousands of kilometres, wildly different lives, and trips that most people would construe as disastrous, she became my person.

I wish we could be on this show, Remi says quietly, about twenty minutes later.

Us? I ask. Like as a couple?

Yeah, I mean, think about it, she says. You could get a green card and then eventually move to LA or New York or some other fashion hub way easier than trying to navigate work visas—

She stops speaking abruptly, and her expression shifts from thoughtful to light bulb.

Oh my God, she says. Why didn’t we think of this when Captain Skinny-Dick broke up with you months ago?

Captain Skinny-Dick is the nickname we not-so-affectionately gave my ex. A commentary, really, on sex that felt more like being poked with a broomstick than pleasured.

Again, love isn’t always built on sexual compatibility. Though moving forward, I should probably take that into consideration.

Think of what? I ask carefully.

You coming here on a K-1 visa. She gestures toward her TV, even though I can’t see it. On my screen, a woman is currently throwing a drink at her fiancé in a restaurant. Like the show.

I blink at her. You want me to date an emotionally unstable man from Florida?

No. Remi rolls her eyes. I mean the visa part.

Remi. I laugh. That’s not how immigration works.

I know there’s a process, she says. Paperwork, interviews, whatever.

Photos. Proof we’re in an actual relationship, I continue. You know, evidence we’ve spent time together.

We have spent time together, Remi says immediately. Just not romantically.

You also live in a small town, I add. Won’t people think it’s weird you’ve never mentioned dating anyone, let alone being engaged?

Hm. Remi frowns thoughtfully. You not having a penis is also going to be a problem.

What?

Shh. She waves me off, brows knitting as she stares into the middle distance, clearly already problem-solving.

I recognize that look. It’s the same expression she once wore right before convincing me to hike three kilometres through Alaska bush and snow because the northern lights were vibing.

I’ve got it! she says.

My stomach drops.

My brother!

Ruger? I ask.

Yeah. Him.

I stare at her for a full three seconds. I barely know your brother.

You know he’s employed, reasonably attractive, and unlikely to murder you in the woods, Remi says. That’s already more promising than half the couples on this show.

Remi.

What?

You’re suggesting I commit immigration fraud with a man who once watched me lose a battle against fleece-lined pants.

The embarrassing memory of me trying to pull pants on over my Smartwool leggings before ultimately falling sideways into the garbage bags Remi had left by the front door still haunts me.

Remi shrugs. Technically, I’m suggesting you temporarily marry a man who already likes you enough to stop you from freezing to death.

That’s not better.

You could come to Alaska for six months tomorrow if you wanted, she says with a shrug. But then what? You can’t legally work long term. You’d just be delaying the problem.

My stomach twists because, annoyingly, she has a point.

But there’s still Montreal.

Oh, screw Montreal, she says. You don’t even speak French.

Again, another point for Remi.

Okay, but let’s be realistic. There’s still paperwork, I argue. Interviews. Background checks. They literally investigate your relationship.

Which is why Ruger makes sense, Remi says. You’ve met him, so we have a few photos of you two together.

I’m sneezing in one of them, I point out. And Ruger looks both disgusted and alarmed.

Nothing a little Photoshop can’t fix.

I stare at her. Oh God. I can literally see the future jail cell waiting for me.

You’re being really dramatic, Remi says.

I think I’m being reasonable, I counter. Photos aside, if the town would be suspicious of you and me dating, won’t they be suspicious of me and him?

That’s the brilliant part, Remi says. You two met on that four-day whirlwind trip and started talking afterward and never stopped. It’s believable.

Believable? I repeat. Remi, this isn’t a school project. This is an actual marriage.

That finally slows her down.

Just slightly.

It wouldn’t be forever, she says. Just a couple years, and you’d have your green card, then an easy-peasy divorce. Then you could go anywhere you wanted. New York. LA. Somewhere your ex can’t touch your career anymore. I’ll come with you!

Easy-peasy divorce? Do you hear yourself? I say.

I drag my hand through my thick curls and let out a long sigh. I hate that this idea is tempting. A K-1 visa and a green card would fast-track me out of the Canadian fashion industry and give me access to the American one. I could rebuild my life in a new country.

But there’s no denying this is fraud. Actual, federal-crime-level fraud.

And the consequences range anywhere from being banned from the US for life to actual prison time. And orange really isn’t my colour.

Worse, though, is the fact that this entire hypothetical disaster hinges entirely on another person. Ruger Seale isn’t some random guy from a dating app who’s accidentally wandered into a terrible decision. He’s real. And it doesn’t feel too bold to assume that he has very real feelings.

Which raises one extremely important question.

And Ruger will… agree to this?

I don’t know, Remi admits, though the wheels in her head are very clearly already spinning. But Ruger has this compulsive need to help people, even when it’s objectively a terrible idea.

That doesn’t explain why he’d agree to commit a felony for me.

Your entire career got torched by a powerful man. Ruger’s very weird about injustice.

I give her a look because none of that feels strong enough to justify fake-marriage-level commitment.

It’s temporary, she says. Ruger is allergic to serious relationships, and the fact that you fully intend to leave Alaska for a bigger city someday only makes this safer for him. He’s basically anaphylactic to life in a city.

I sigh, because at most, she’s just asking him for a deeply questionable favour. And he has every right to say no.

And what exactly do I have to lose?

I have no job. No boyfriend. No siblings to fall back on.

I have no real support system anymore. Most of my friends sided with Captain Skinny-Dick during the breakup after he accused me of using him to build my career and never really loving him in the first place.

Which hurt more than I like admitting because I poured so much of myself into that relationship.

The only reason I have a place to land now is because Kay’s been on and off in my life since I was a kid because my dad was friends with her dad.

And my own parents…

My dad died a few years ago from a massive heart attack, and my mom’s been out of my life since she left in 1992. I’m not even sure if I could pick her out of a lineup at this point.

Which means the only thing left for me in Vancouver is this IKEA pullout couch that is actively trying to fold me into the afterlife.

Fine, I say finally. If your brother agrees, we can discuss it.

Remi squeals. I hate hugging, but if I could hug you right now, I absolutely would.

That night, I finish my roommate’s fancy wine. The next day, Remi asks her brother to take my hand in holy matrimony. A week after that, he agrees.

I didn’t know it then, but exactly one year later, I’d become the newest resident of Alpine Harbor, Alaska.