Chapter 7
LEDGER
Two days.
It had been two full days since Roxie Montgomery offered to marry me.
And somehow, the world kept spinning like nothing had happened.
Two days.
Forty-eight hours of trying to think straight.
Forty-eight hours of failing.
This morning, though? This morning the universe decided to stop being subtle.
The notice was taped to my locker.
Facility access expires in twelve days.
Twelve.
I stood there staring at the bold black letters, like maybe if I blinked enough they’d blur into something less humiliating. Something less final.
My throat felt tight again. An ache I was becoming too accustomed to. Not pain, not quite panic. Just pressure. Like my ribs didn’t know how to hold what was happening.
Twelve days until I was done.
Twelve days until I couldn’t swim here.
Twelve days until the dream I’d been working toward for a decade evaporated.
I folded the paper, shoved it into my bag, and tried to breathe normally. No one else in the locker room looked at me. That was the blessing of being an older nonstudent athlete on campus. They didn’t know me well enough to ask. They didn’t owe me sympathy.
But it still felt like someone had turned a spotlight on the exact part of my life I was barely holding together.
I showered. I changed. And I barely remembered any of it, just went through the motions.
By the time I stepped outside, everything inside me felt wired—tight, buzzing, unmanageable.
My pride and my dream were warring inside of me.
The only war I’d ever really known.
My pride said, You can’t. You won’t. You don’t take handouts. You don’t tie your life to someone else’s because you’re too broke to stand on your own.
My dream said, You’ve worked too hard. Too long. You’re too close to let it die now.
And underneath both of those? The truth I tried not to say out loud:
If I walked away, it wasn’t just the Worlds I’d lose.
I’d lose the only version of myself I’d ever been proud of.
The thought kept circling, relentless, gnawing at every excuse I tried to make.
Pride fought panic, reason fought desperation, and none of it gave me a real answer.
And maybe the reason why was that no matter how many times I told myself to let it go, I couldn’t.
Not really. Not when the alternative was waking up tomorrow as someone I didn’t recognize.
I shook my head. I could still remember what it felt like to believe that version of me had a future. Back when everything seemed possible. Before sponsors and deadlines and fear made the world smaller.
By the time I reached my apartment, the decision felt both inevitable and impossible. Like I was being pulled toward a cliff edge, and I didn’t want to jump, but I couldn’t walk away either.
The thought of Roxie made my pulse jackhammer even harder.
Her face when she’d said I might be able to help you.
Her voice when she’d explained the trust clause.
Her eyes—sharp, bright, too perceptive—when she’d realized I wasn’t okay.
She was the last person in the world I should tie myself to.
Except she was also the only person who actually had a way of helping me.
I dropped my bag on the floor, paced three steps one way, turned, and paced back. I did that for … honestly, I didn’t know. Minutes. An hour. Time stretched weirdly when your future was circling the drain.
Finally, something inside me just snapped into place.
I grabbed my keys and walked out, not wanting to give myself time to reconsider.
If I thought too long, I wouldn’t go.
And if I didn’t go, I’d lose everything.
Her building was two blocks over, and I got there in record time thanks to my speed walking. I climbed the stairs two at a time, adrenaline burning in my bloodstream.
The hall was quiet, and thankfully there was no one around to see me. Not that they would know what I was here for, but I already felt humiliated enough just thinking about this, let alone being here.
I knocked.
I waited for a beat, and then another.
Maybe she wasn’t home? Maybe then I could say I tried but it didn’t work out.
The sound of footsteps approaching had my heart beating faster.
The lock clicked.
And then Roxie stood in the doorway, barefoot, wearing shorts (that I tried not to let my eyes linger on for too long but failed) and an oversized sweater, curls piled on top of her head in a messy knot.
Her eyes widened when she saw me, surprise flickering into something else. Concern, maybe, or dread. Hard to tell with her.
“Ledger?” she said softly. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said, before I could think better of it. “We need to talk.”
Her expression shifted—sharpened, wheels turning—like she’d just been handed a media scandal she had thirty seconds to spin.
“Come in.” She stepped aside.
I walked into her apartment, trying not to notice the faint citrus-vanilla smell that hung in the air or the way everything inside looked like her. A structured mess, warm colors, and a thousand little things that shouldn’t matter to me.
“Livvi isn’t here,” she said quickly, closing the door. “She’s at Talon’s.”
Good. I didn’t think I could handle an audience for this train wreck.
I stayed standing. Sitting felt too vulnerable. Too settled. I wasn’t settled. I was the opposite of settled.
Roxie crossed her arms, a defensive posture, her trademark move, and waited.
I dug the folded paper out of my pocket and held it up.
“Twelve days.” My voice sounded rough, like gravel in a blender.
Her brows pulled tight. “Ledger …”
“I’m not here to … whatever.” I waved a vague hand between us. “I’m not here to make this emotional.”
Her lips twitched. “You realize everything about this is emotional, right?”
“Yeah, well,” I muttered, “I’m trying not to die inside, so work with me.”
She snorted—actually snorted—and something in my chest loosened a fraction. Not relief. Not comfort. Just a breath I didn’t have to fight for.
I cleared my throat. “You said you could help. I don’t want help. I don’t want a bailout. But I …” The words tangled together. I tried again. “I can’t lose access to the pool, Roxie. I can’t. Not like this.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“I’m not saying yes,” I added, because pride wasn’t dead yet. “But I need answers. If—if—we were to consider this thing, this arrangement—”
“Marriage,” she said, deadpan.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“How else am I supposed to say it?”
I grimaced. “Quietly?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ledger, what do you want to know?”
Everything. Nothing. All of it.
“Rules,” I said instead. “We need rules.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Rules.”
“Yes. Ground rules. Boundaries. If we seriously consider this—which we probably shouldn’t—we need it written out. Like a business deal.”
She blinked at me. “You want a contract.”
I shrugged. “You’re the one with the trust fund paperwork. Seems on-brand.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then pointed toward the kitchen table. “Sit. If we’re doing this, I need caffeine.”
I sat reluctantly, my body humming with restless energy. She moved around the kitchen, brewing a cup of coffee, grabbing her laptop, pulling out a pad of paper. It hit me then—hard—that we were actually doing this. Talking logistics. Talking marriage like it was an item on a to-do list.
She slid into the chair across from me. “Okay. Rule one?”
I stared at her. At the curve of her jaw. The small wrinkle between her eyebrows she always got when she was concentrating. The hint of freckles she probably thought no one noticed.
The last person in the world I should marry.
Even so—
“No feelings,” I said.
Her brows lifted. “Obviously.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Like—none,” I clarified. “No … I don’t know. No getting weird. No falling in … anything.”
Her lips twitched again. “I promise not to spontaneously fall in love with you, Ledger.”
I ignored the way my pulse jumped. “Good.”
“Rule two.” She jotted something down. “No touching?”
I swallowed. “Minimal touching.”
“Define minimal.”
“I don’t know. Handshakes? High fives? None of the … other stuff.”
Touching was the last thing I needed. Heck, half the time when she was arguing with me—chin tilted up, eyes blazing, talking with her hands like she was conducting a very aggressive orchestra—I had to physically plant my feet to keep from grabbing her wrists, pulling her in, and shutting her up in a way that had nothing to do with winning the argument.
Being around her that much, in the same apartment, pretending to be married?
Yeah. The less contact, the better. For both of us. Or at least, that’s what I told myself.
She raised a brow. “You think we’re going to be tempted to—?”
“No,” I said too fast. “Absolutely not.”
Her smile was both infuriating and … something else. “Noted.”
I shifted in my chair. “Rule three: This is temporary. As soon as your trust fund activates and I get stable, we’re done.”
She nodded. “Agreed. We dissolve the marriage as soon as we both get what we need.”
A knot twisted in my stomach, tight and unpleasant.
Temporary.
Right. That was the point.
She tapped her pen against the pad. “Anything else?”
A dozen thoughts fought for space in my head. Most of them were things I couldn’t say out loud. Like how standing in front of her at the café, something inside me had felt too exposed. How I hated that she could read me. How I hated even more that she cared.
“How do we tell people?” I asked instead.
Her lips parted, but she didn’t answer immediately. She looked down at the notebook, then back up at me with something that almost resembled honesty.
“With our friends?” she said. “There’s no way we can hide this from them. Talon will sniff it out in five minutes. Ridge will sniff it out in three. And Livvi …” She gave a dry laugh. “She’ll probably figure it out before we even say anything.”
A sound escaped me—half groan, half laugh. “Great.”
“But anyone else?” she continued, shrugging slightly. “We make it believable. Contracts get signed. Rings get bought. Pictures get posted. We fake it.”
We fake it.
I nodded, trying to swallow around the tightness in my throat. “Coach mentioned something,” I added. “There’s a sponsorship fund the university gives to married athletes. It’s small, but it would cover some of the training expenses I’m losing.”
She blinked, her pen stilling. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I didn’t think it mattered,” I said quietly. “But it could help. If we do this.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay. Then we put it on the list.”
The list. Because we were apparently people who made lists to plan fake marriages now.
Her eyes flicked toward me again. “You know this means we’ll have to live together, right?”
My stomach tightened. “Yeah. I know.”
Living together was one of the reasons I’d fought so hard to find another option—any other option—before I walked over here tonight.
Sharing a roof with Roxie Montgomery wasn’t just a logistical complication; it was a guaranteed disaster.
She already got under my skin at a distance.
Putting us in the same apartment? The same kitchen?
The same air? It felt like signing up for a year-long test of whether I could keep my sanity—or my hands—to myself.
“And you’re okay with that?”
Absolutely not.
She drove me insane. She had since the day we’d met—sharp tongue, sharper glare, all edges and fire. Half the time she made me want to argue with her. The other half …
Yeah, I wasn’t going to finish that sentence.
“I’ll manage,” I said.
Her brows pulled together. Not mocking, not challenging, just curious. Like she was trying to figure out what, exactly, “manage” meant.
If she knew the truth, that being around her too much made my pulse kick for reasons I didn’t want to examine, she’d weaponize it instantly.
I cleared my throat. “Anything else we need to think about?”
“Only a million things,” she muttered. Then, more quietly: “But we’ll figure it out.”
Silence stretched between us. It wasn’t tense or hostile. Just loaded.
I exhaled slowly. “Okay.”
She blinked. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeated, my voice barely above a breath. “Let’s do it.”
Roxie didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But her inhale was sharp. Almost startled. Like she couldn’t believe I’d actually said it.
Truth was, neither could I.
But the decision, once spoken, settled into my bones with strange finality. Not quite relief and not panic, but something else. Something heavier. Something solid.
The train was already moving.
And there was no getting off now.