Chapter 10
ROXIE
By day three of living with Ledger Hayes, I’d learned one very specific thing: elite swimmers lived like sleep-deprived aquatic monks.
And because our apartment was roughly the size of a large walk-in closet, the vibrating buzz of his phone might as well have been inside my skull.
I groaned into my pillow as he slapped it silent and practically rolled out of bed. There was a thump—him hitting the floor—and a muttered curse.
“Why?” I mumbled into the mattress.
“For excellence,” he grumbled back, already pulling on a hoodie and sweats. He padded around the room like a giant sleepy cat.
I kept my eyes closed, refusing to witness this madness. “You know what’s excellent? Sleep.”
“That’s not what Coach says.”
“Well, Coach sounds exhausting,” I mumbled.
Ledger snorted and brushed his teeth in the bathroom with the door half closed, because shutting it all the way would be too nice of him.
After he rummaged around in the kitchen for what felt like several long minutes, he came back in the bedroom to grab his swim bag, this time moving like he was trying not to disturb a wild animal.
I cracked one eye open.
He hesitated at the doorway to the bedroom. “I, uh, made coffee. The pot’s on.”
That startled me more than the 4:47 a.m. alarm.
“You made coffee?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “You looked tired last night. I know a swimmer’s schedule isn’t for the faint of heart.”
I blinked at him. Ledger noticing anything about me felt illegal. But before I could say anything, he left, the door clicking softly behind him.
And then, like an idiot, I smiled into my pillow.
Thankfully, today I was working from home and got to get an extra half hour of much needed sleep before having to start my day.
By the time Ledger dragged himself back at nine thirty, he looked like someone had wrung him out and then ironed him flat.
I was sitting cross-legged on the living room rug surrounded by my laptop, my planner, two binders, and a pile of highlighters—all spread out like a crime scene of ambition.
I wasn’t trying to impress him; I genuinely had work to do. But also, maybe it was a little impressive. I wanted him to see that I wasn’t just some trust fund baby. That I showed up. That I did the work, even when the job itself wasn’t glamorous or impressive.
The money wasn’t a shortcut—it was a tool. Seed money, not a safety blanket. And I wasn’t touching it until I had something real to build with it.
Ledger paused in the doorway, his swim bag still slung on his shoulder. “Are you organizing a Senate hearing?” he asked.
“It’s called planning content,” I said without looking up.
He took in the spread of notebooks, my laptop, swatches of color palettes, and a stack of brand product sheets. “There are color codes.”
“Well, yeah.” I clicked my pen. “It’s how normal humans keep campaigns straight.”
He dropped his swim bag and toed off his slides. “There are tabs.”
I lifted one of the binders. “This one is for product launches. This one is for holiday reels. This one is for sponsored partnerships. Welcome to the thrilling world of home-goods marketing.”
Ledger blinked, like he’d wandered into a foreign country that also sold decorative throw pillows.
“Believe it or not,” I added, “some people prepare for life.”
He shook his head, trudged past me, and went straight for the kitchen sink. He filled a giant cup of water like he’d been wandering the Sahara.
As he drank, he kept looking over at my pile of neat and orderly mess.
I pretended not to notice … and also absolutely noticed.
He gulped down half the cup. “You work like this every day?”
I didn’t look up. “Yeah.”
A moment passed, frozen and weirdly quiet.
“Rox,” he said softly.
My head snapped up. He’d never called me that before.
He corrected quickly. “Roxanne.”
Ah. There it was.
I rolled my eyes. “What?”
His expression softened a fraction. “I had no idea you worked so hard.”
My heart stuttered. It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have felt like anything. If anything, I should have been annoyed that he’d thought I wasn’t a hard worker, that I had been receiving handouts.
But somehow hearing him say that, hearing him recognize it, sent a small spread of warmth through me.
And I had no idea what to do with that, so I snapped the lid of my highlighter shut and said, “Don’t sound so shocked.”
The rest of the day passed quietly—me buried in content drafts, Ledger bouncing between workouts and recovery like a machine. We orbited each other without really colliding, the apartment too small for space but somehow still full of unsaid things.
That night, as I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, the towel bar suddenly detached from the wall and crashed down, nearly decapitating me. I yelped loud enough that Ledger bolted in from the hallway like someone fired a starter gun.
“You okay?” he demanded.
“It attacked me!” I pointed at the towel bar like it was sentient.
He took one look and huffed a laugh. “It was loose, that’s all.”
“I know it’s loose. It tried to kill me.”
He rolled his eyes, leaned in close, and inspected the stripped screws. Then he walked out to the kitchen and returned with a tiny tool kit like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“You keep tools?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Grew up in a house where everything broke every other week.” He knelt beside the wall. “If you wanted something fixed, you learned to do it yourself. So now I keep tools around. Saves time. And money.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Not because I didn’t understand the words, but because I’d grown up in a house where nothing ever stayed broken. Where someone else handled it. I’d never had to learn how to fix things, because someone was always paid to do it for me.
Watching him line up the screws and tighten them with practiced ease did something weird to my throat anyway. Like admiration mixed with something quieter and heavier. Respect, maybe. Or the sudden awareness of how differently we’d learned to survive.
And then he wiped the bar clean with the hem of his shirt, lifting it just enough to reveal a strip of his stomach—his stupidly defined six-pack—and my brain promptly short-circuited.
Heat climbed up my neck, completely betraying me.
By the time he stepped back, I realized I’d been staring at him like he’d just built a house with his bare hands.
“There,” he said. “Safe from all towel-related violence.”
I nodded slowly. “Thank you.”
His expression changed, barely, but enough to tell me the gratitude hit differently than our usual snark.
He shrugged. “It was nothing.”
Except it wasn’t nothing. Things were changing between us, and I didn’t know how I felt about it.
But I obviously was feeling semi-good about it since the next night I was doing something I’d never done before. Something I hadn’t thought I’d ever do.
It was eight thirty. Ledger had left for practice again after his afternoon weights, something about lactate sets that sounded illegal. He wasn’t home yet, and I knew he was going to be dead when he walked in.
So I made pasta.
Just pasta. Nothing special.
But I made enough for two.
When the door opened, I looked up from the table.
Ledger walked in still wet from a second shower and visibly limping from exhaustion. He froze when he saw the food.
“I ate already,” he blurted.
I raised a brow. “You ate two hours ago. An apple does not count as a meal.” I actually didn’t know that, but I assumed that whatever he had eaten right before practice couldn’t have been a meal.
“An apple and a protein bar,” he countered.
He hesitated in the doorway, like approaching the table was a trap. I recognized the look now, the instinctive recoil from anything that felt like help. Ledger didn’t do handouts. He tolerated assistance only if it came dressed up as something else.
Then he stepped forward slowly, closing the door, his voice quieter. “You, uh, made this?”
“Yes.” I held up a hand before he could retreat. “And before you start, it’s not charity. It’s basic human survival. Eat.”
He stared at the bowl, then at me, then back at the bowl.
And then he sat.
When he took the first bite, his shoulders dropped, like the weight of the entire campus let go of him. He didn’t moan or anything dramatic like that, but his eyes closed briefly.
And that was worse.
Because that was real.
“This is good,” he said, voice low and warm and tired.
Something fluttered in the base of my throat. “It’s literally just pasta, Ledger.”
I did not want to make a big deal out of this.
“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s good.”
We didn’t talk much after that. We ate. Quietly. Comfortably.
Enemies did not eat pasta this way. Which had me wondering what we were becoming.
Three days later, the call came.
I was in the bedroom, sorting clothes into our totally-not-equal halves of the dresser, when my phone buzzed.
The word Mom appeared on the screen.
My stomach dropped. She never called unless something was wrong—or unless I was wrong.
I answered anyway. “Hi, Mom.”
Ledger was in the living room, doing his stretches on the floor. He shot me a curious glance but didn’t move away—there was nowhere to go in this apartment.
Her voice hit instantly, sharp and bright like champagne-glass shards. “Well. I suppose congratulations are in order.”
Oh, fantastic. She’d heard.
I swallowed. “I was going to call you—”
“Were you?” she interrupted. “Because your aunt Roberta called me about it. Imagine my surprise, Roxie, hearing from someone else that my daughter got married.”
I wasn’t surprised that family members were starting to hear about it. When a big chunk of the family money was transferred, there was bound to be chatter.
I stared at the wall. “I wasn’t hiding it.”
“Then what would you call it? And why didn’t you marry someone appropriate? Someone stable. Someone we actually know.” The sound of disapproval and disdain in her voice made me pull the phone away from my ear.
Ledger’s breathing slowed. He was listening. I couldn’t blame him—my mother’s voice could probably penetrate steel.
She continued, “You had options. You could have worked things out with Michael—”
“Mom,” I cut in, my annoyance flaring. “I broke up with Michael over a year and a half ago.”
She tsked. “And we all thought that was a phase.”
“A phase?” Was she serious?
“A rebellious streak,” she said matter-of-factly. “But instead of coming to your senses, you went and—what? Married some boy you barely know?”
Ledger’s head lifted sharply at that.
My grip tightened on the phone. “The trust fund deadline was coming up. I had to make a choice.”
“You made the wrong one,” she snapped. “Again.”
The word again stung like a slap.
Ledger’s jaw flexed from across the room. His hands had stilled completely.
Mom sighed dramatically, the martyr of the century. “I want to meet him. This … Ledger.”
“It’s not a good time,” I said quietly. It made me cringe to know that they’d done enough digging to find out his name. And probably his lack of a pedigree.
“It is absolutely a good time,” she corrected. “If you’re going to throw your life away, I deserve to at least see the man you’re doing it for. And Roxie?” she sighed. “What do you even plan to do with that money now?”
She acted like there was no way I could possibly know what to do with money if I didn’t have the proper man to help me. It hardened my resolve to prove to her that I was capable of more than just marrying some well-to-do man and being his trophy wife.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t made a plan yet, hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do. So instead of pushing my shoulders back and answering with pride, my shoulders only drooped.
“I don’t know yet,” I whispered. “But I’ll figure it out.”
“You should have listened to us. There was a plan for you. A proper one.”
My throat constricted. I stepped toward the tiny window because I couldn’t stand still anymore. “I’m not doing this right now.”
“Of course you’re not,” she said briskly. “Call me when you’re ready to talk like a grown-up instead of a child making emotional decisions.”
And then she hung up.
I didn’t move. I barely breathed.
My chest felt like it was caving inward, like she’d taken every single barely healed bruise and pressed her thumb directly onto it.
The silence afterward rang.
Ledger stood slowly, making his way over to the doorway of the bedroom. “Roxie?” he said carefully.
I blinked hard, keeping my back to him. “It’s fine.”
“It didn’t sound fine.”
I forced a laugh, brittle and pathetic. “It never does with her.”
A long pause. Too long.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That she talks to you like that.”
Something inside me cracked at that, so gently I almost didn’t feel it at first. Then it spread, warm and painful.
I turned halfway toward him, arms wrapped around myself. “It’s normal.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
My throat ached. “She’s just disappointed.”
“Yeah.” His voice was low. “I heard.”
I winced, realizing how much he must’ve caught. Of course he had. The apartment was the size of a shoebox, and my mom’s voice was probably loud enough to be heard across the street.
“She thinks I ruined my life.”
He studied me with an expression I couldn’t read. Something intense. Something frustrated. Something … protective?
“Did you?” he asked softly.
I shook my head. “No. I made a choice, and I’m standing by it.”
He exhaled, his shoulders easing, like he’d been holding tension for both of us. “Okay.”
That single word steadied me in a way my mother never had. Like he believed in me.
And then, because the universe hates me, my voice cracked. “But it still hurts.”
Ledger swallowed. Hard. “I know.”
I looked at him fully then. At his broad shoulders stretching the fabric of his T-shirt, his bare feet, the muscle in his jaw working like he wanted to fight something on my behalf.
And for a terrifying second, I felt safer than I should.
Far safer than I had any right to feel.
I wiped my eyes and straightened. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t argue. But I was pretty sure he didn’t believe me, either. “Okay. But if you ever want to talk about it—”
I shook my head. “I won’t.”
He cracked the smallest smile. “Yeah. I figured.”
Something loosened in my chest, painful and warm and stupid.
Enemies didn’t look at each other like this.
Uneasy allies, maybe.
Something else … possibly.
But not enemies.
Not anymore.