Chapter 12
ROXIE
The apartment felt smaller than usual when we got back from the swim meet.
Not physically—it was still the same one-bedroom box with its too-short couch and mismatched kitchen chairs—but emotionally. Like the air had thickened, heavy with everything that hadn’t yet been said.
Ledger dropped his swim bag by the door and kicked off his shoes, hair still wet from the post-meet shower, shoulders loose in a way I hadn’t seen before. He looked good. Relaxed. Confident. Like the version of him that existed before the world had started threatening to take everything away.
I hated that I noticed.
I hated that part of me replayed the way he’d said my wife in my head, like my brain was testing the words, turning them over, pressing on their edges to see if they bent or broke.
They didn’t.
Which was the problem.
I moved into the kitchen before the thought could settle, before it could take root and lead me to ask questions I wasn’t ready to answer. Distraction had always been my specialty—give myself a task, a list, a problem to solve, and I could outrun just about any feeling.
Cold water. Fridge light. Something normal.
As I twisted the cap off the bottle, another problem surfaced, one I’d been avoiding all afternoon. The text from my mom. The polite pressure. The carefully worded expectation wrapped in disappointment.
This, at least, was familiar territory.
Better to deal with that than the unsettling warmth pooling around my heart over two words Ledger hadn’t even meant, at least not the way my brain clearly wanted him to.
I took a sip, squared my shoulders, and reached for the thing I could control.
“So,” I said casually, like my pulse hadn’t just kicked up a notch. “My mom wants us to come over for brunch.”
The word us landed between us with a thud.
Ledger froze, a water bottle halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he turned to look at me. “Today?”
I shook my head quickly. “No. Gosh, no. This weekend.”
His shoulders dropped a fraction. “Okay. Still not thrilled, but okay.”
“That makes two of us.”
He leaned against the counter, studying my face. “You don’t want to go.”
I scoffed. “Wow. Incredible insight. Truly.”
But he didn’t take the bait. Didn’t fire back. Didn’t smirk or toss out one of his infuriatingly calm swimmer-boy comments.
He just waited.
And for some reason, that unnerved me more than if he’d argued.
I’d been braced for snark, for the easy friction we’d been using like armor since the courthouse. Sarcasm, I could handle. Sniping, I could manage. But this? This quiet patience felt like someone setting down a chair and asking me to actually sit with something I’d been strategically avoiding.
I shifted my weight, suddenly hyperaware of the space between us.
I sighed and leaned back against the opposite counter, the distance between us feeling deliberate now. “I don’t want to go,” I admitted. “But we kind of have to. It’ll be like ripping off a Band-Aid. The longer we wait, the worse it will be.”
“And this is damage control?”
“This is survival,” I corrected. “If we show up united, polite, wearing rings, maybe she’ll be too busy judging our napkin placement to interrogate us.”
“Rings,” Ledger repeated.
“Yeah.” I winced. “That’s the other thing. We don’t have wedding rings,” I said. “Which … it’s probably time we get some.”
My mind, traitor that it was, immediately jumped back to the swim meet. To the guy leaning too close. To the way Ledger had stepped in without hesitation.
My wife.
If I’d had a ring on my finger, maybe that guy wouldn’t have flirted with me in the first place. And the fact that I didn’t know whether that thought disappointed me or relieved me was not something I wanted to unpack.
Even worse was the part of my brain that wondered, very briefly, what would happen if someone else flirted with me. If Ledger would react again. If he’d say it again.
My wife.
I shut down that line of thinking immediately. Hard stop. Full mental emergency brake.
This was not a game. This was not an experiment. And I absolutely could not afford to be thinking about how it felt when Ledger Hayes acted like I belonged to him.
It was messing with me more than it should. And it was confusing in a way I didn’t have time for.
A beat passed.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. That’s a pretty big oversight.”
I shrugged. “We were a little busy panicking and signing paperwork.”
He huffed a quiet laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Guess we can’t exactly show up and say we’re trying a minimalist approach to marriage.”
“Especially not to my mother.”
He straightened. “Okay. So. Rings before brunch.”
I watched him process it, watched the way he didn’t immediately look for an out, didn’t suggest I go alone or handle it myself. He just accepted it as part of the plan.
Which was unsettling in a way I didn’t want to unpack.
“And,” I added, bracing myself, “she’ll want to know what I’m doing now that the trust is unlocked.”
Ledger’s expression softened. “You don’t have to justify anything.”
I laughed, short and humorless. “Tell that to her.”
“I’m serious, Roxie.”
I waved him off and turned back to the counter, setting down my water. “I know. But she won’t see it that way. To her, money is a roadmap. It’s not supposed to buy time or freedom—it’s supposed to funnel you into the right life.”
“And you didn’t follow the route.”
“Nope. Took a hard left just before ‘marry a rich guy and host charity luncheons.’”
He smiled faintly. “Reckless.”
I snorted. “You have no idea.”
There was a pause, and then he said, “What do you want to tell her?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You said she’s going to ask what you’re doing now. What do you want the answer to be?”
I hesitated.
Because the truth was, I didn’t have a polished answer yet. I had ideas—half formed, buzzing, exciting in a way that scared me—but nothing concrete. And my mother didn’t do well with things that weren’t concrete.
“I work as a social media content creator for a home-goods brand,” I said slowly. “But that’s not all I want.”
“What else?”
The question was gentle. Not prying or skeptical. Just open.
And somehow that made it harder.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to say it out loud yet. Not to him. Naming things made them real, and real things could be judged, dismissed, or—worse—taken seriously. I’d spent years deflecting, rolling my eyes, pretending I didn’t care what came next because caring had never earned me much grace.
But I also realized, with a flicker of surprise, that I didn’t hate the idea of him knowing. That letting Ledger see this unpolished part of me didn’t feel like handing him ammunition.
That was new.
And a little alarming.
“I want to build something,” I finally admitted. “Something that’s mine. Not just content that disappears after a campaign cycle. Something sustainable.”
Ledger nodded like that made perfect sense. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I repeated.
I’d been braced for skepticism. A joke. A sarcastic comment about rich-girl hobbies or half-baked passion projects. Something to deflect the seriousness of what I’d just said. That was our usual rhythm, one of us poking at each other until the other one snapped back.
But this?
This was supportive.
It felt like the conversation had tilted off its axis, like gravity had shifted and I hadn’t adjusted yet.
He stepped closer to the kitchen counter. “Yeah. Okay. So what does that look like?”
I stared at him. “You’re … asking?”
“I’m brainstorming,” he said. “You said you wanted a plan.”
I studied him, suspicious. “Since when are you good at brainstorming anything that isn’t swim-related?”
Because this was new. Ledger Hayes didn’t sit around helping people untangle their futures. He powered through problems. Muscled past them. Turned everything into discipline and reps and willpower.
He shrugged. “Since I married someone whose brain works differently than mine.”
That shouldn’t have warmed my chest. It really shouldn’t have.
I grabbed my notebook from the table and flipped it open, spreading a few pages between us. “I’ve been thinking about expanding into consulting. Helping smaller brands figure out content strategy without charging insane agency fees.”
“That sounds smart.”
“It’s risky.”
“So is swimming for a living.”
I shot him a look. “Touché.”
We leaned over the counter together, shoulders nearly brushing as I pointed out scribbled ideas and half-written lists. He asked questions, real ones, not just polite nods. About scalability. About time management. About what I actually enjoyed doing versus what just paid well.
At some point, without looking, we both reached for the same pen.
Our fingers brushed.
It was nothing, barely a graze, accidental and fleeting, but my body reacted like it had been waiting for it. A sharp, powerful spark shot up my arm, fast and unmistakable.
I froze.
So did he.
The room seemed to hold its breath as our eyes met, something unspoken passing between us—surprise, awareness, maybe a warning we both ignored. His hand stayed there a fraction longer than it needed to, warm and solid against mine, before he finally pulled back.
His jaw tightened, like maybe he was reining something in.
And suddenly the pen didn’t matter at all.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
“It’s fine,” I replied, too quickly.
Except it wasn’t.
My pulse had picked up, my skin buzzing like I’d just touched a live wire. I tried to tell myself it was leftover adrenaline from the meet, from the day, from everything being new and strange.
But that didn’t explain the way my stomach flipped.
Or the fact that I suddenly couldn’t stop noticing how close he was standing.
We went back to the notebook, but the air had shifted. Every movement felt amplified. Every glance held a fraction longer than before.
“So.” He cleared his throat. “If you frame it as consulting plus content creation, it shows growth. Direction.”
“Direction,” I echoed. “My mom loves that word.”
“There you go.”
I looked at him, really looked at him, and something uncomfortable nudged at the back of my mind.
Ledger wasn’t just humoring me. He seemed invested.
And I didn’t know what to do with that.
Because somewhere between the swim meet and the kitchen counter and the accidental brush of our hands, a dangerous thought had crept in.
Do I actually like him?
Not as a partner in crime. Not as a convenient solution. But as him.
The idea sent a ripple of unease through me.
Liking Ledger complicated things. It blurred lines I’d carefully drawn.
It made everything feel less controlled, less predictable.
I’d agreed to this arrangement because it was strategic—mutually beneficial, clean on paper.
Feelings weren’t part of the contract. Attraction was supposed to stay hypothetical. Contained.
Manageable.
Except there was nothing manageable about the way he listened when I talked, like my half-formed ideas actually mattered.
Or the way he’d stepped in at the meet without hesitation, claiming me like it was instinct instead of performance.
Or how being around him lately felt less like arguing and more like orbiting—close enough to feel the pull, but far enough to pretend I wasn’t affected.
I didn’t want to want him.
Because wanting him meant risk. It meant disappointment. It meant caring in a way that couldn’t be explained away as logic or survival or necessity. And I’d spent my whole life learning how to be fine without that. To be sharp, self-contained, and untouched.
But Ledger was standing there in the kitchen, earnest and supportive, offering to help me build something when no one else ever had without an agenda attached.
And as he smiled at me, soft, encouraging, and completely unaware of the war he was starting inside my chest, I realized something else too.
I didn’t want to pull away.
I didn’t want to retreat into sarcasm or rules or carefully maintained distance. I wanted to stay right here, in this strange in-between, where things felt real and uncertain and terrifying in a way that made my pulse quicken instead of slow.
And that scared me more than my mother ever could.