5. Freya
— ? —
Freya
One year ago, I married a man I’d known for fourteen days.
My father was drunk before the ceremony.
It was not even the charming, loosened-up kind of drunk that might have been forgivable at a wedding, but the sloppy, slurring kind that made the guests exchange uncomfortable glances.
My mother had been dead for two months. The fresh grief sat on my chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to smile, hard to pretend this was anything other than what it was.
A transaction. A business arrangement. The sale of a daughter to pay off her father’s debts.
The reception passed in a blur of champagne I didn’t drink and congratulations I didn’t deserve. Rex played his part perfectly. Charming, attentive, the doting new husband, his hand warm on my lower back as we greeted guest after guest. Anyone watching would have thought we were in love.
We barely knew each other’s middle names.
When the last car pulled away and the catering staff began breaking down the tables, Rex led me to the master suite. Our master suite now. The room was enormous, all cream and gold and soft lighting, with a bed big enough to drown in.
I stood in the doorway, my wedding dress suddenly feeling like a costume I’d worn too long.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Rex said from behind me. His voice was quiet. Careful. “I know this isn’t… I know how this looks. But I meant what I said in my vows. I’ll never ask you for more than you want to give.”
I turned to look at him. He’d loosened his tie, undone the top button of his shirt. In the soft lamplight, he looked less like the ruthless businessman who’d bought my family’s ranch and more like a man who was also trying to figure out how we’d ended up here.
“What did you think when my father proposed this?” I asked.
Rex was quiet for a moment. “I thought he was desperate.”
“He was.”
“I thought the ranch was worth it. The land, the water rights, the location.” He paused. “I didn’t think about you at all, at first. You were just part of the deal.”
It should have hurt. It didn’t. I appreciated the honesty.
“And now?”
“Now I think I should have paid more attention.” His eyes traced over my face like he was seeing me for the first time. “You’re not what I expected, Freya.”
“What did you expect?”
“Someone who’d take the money and disappear. Someone who’d resent me for the rest of our lives.” A small smile. “Not someone who spent half the reception making sure my elderly aunts had comfortable chairs.”
“They looked tired. And I didn’t even get anything from the money you paid my father. Not a single cent of it.”
We stood there in silence, two strangers in a room that was supposed to be theirs.
Eventually, we both got ready for bed. I changed in the bathroom, trading my wedding dress for a silk nightgown that felt too fancy for sleeping.
When I came out, Rex was already under the covers, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.
I climbed in beside him. We didn’t touch.
Hours passed. Sleep wouldn’t come. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my mother’s face, heard my father’s slurred speech, felt the weight of the rings on my finger.
The gorgeous room felt like a prison, and the man beside me felt like a stranger, and the rest of my life stretched out ahead of me like a road I hadn’t chosen.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I slipped out of bed and padded to the balcony, letting the cool night air wash over me.
The ranch spread out below, silver under the moonlight.
Out to the horizon stretched a hundred thousand acres that used to belong to my family.
Land my great grandfather had worked, my mother had loved, my father had gambled away piece by piece, starting the year she got sick, until there was nothing left but this final, desperate bargain.
I didn’t hear Rex come out. I just felt the warmth of him behind me, the quiet presence of a man who’d somehow ended up as bound to me as I was to him.
“Can’t sleep either?” he asked.
“Too much in my head.”
“Yeah.” He came to stand beside me at the railing, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. “I keep thinking about what happens next. We’re supposed to build a life together, and I don’t even know your favorite color.”
“Blue,” I said automatically. “Like the sky right before sunset.”
“Mine’s green. Like uh, the grass.”
He earned a smile from me.
We were quiet for a moment, trading small facts like cards in a game we were both learning to play.
His middle name was Lucas. Mine was Alma, after my mother.
He hated olives. I couldn’t stand cilantro.
He’d wanted to be a pilot when he was a kid.
I’d dreamed of teaching, of working with children and horses, of a life my father had called beneath me.
“Why beneath you?” Rex asked.
“Because I’m an Evans. Was an Evans. We don’t teach. We own.” I laughed bitterly. “Look how well that worked out.”
“You could still do it. Teach, I mean. If you wanted.”
“Your mother would love that. Her new daughter-in-law, working at some equestrian camp like common folk.”
“My mother doesn’t get a vote.”
I looked at him, surprised. He was staring out at the ranch, jaw tight.
“I mean it,” he said. “Marrying you had nothing to do with making my mother happy. I married you because…” He trailed off, struggling for words.
“I don’t know why I married you. Because it made sense on paper.
Because the ranch was worth it. And because when I met you that first time, you looked at me like I was the enemy, and I respected that.
You didn’t pretend. You didn’t try to make me like you. And you were honest about hating me.”
“I didn’t hate you.”
“You didn’t like me.”
“I didn’t know you.” I turned to face him fully. “I still don’t.”
“So let’s fix that.” He held my gaze, his gray eyes serious.
“I’m not sure where this will go. Maybe nowhere.
Maybe we’ll stay strangers who share a house.
But I promise you this, Freya. I will never make you feel unsafe or uncared for.
You deserve all the good things in life, and I’m sorry if I’m not enough to give them to you.
But I will always be there for you. Whatever that means. However you need me.”
My throat tightened. “You don’t even know me.”
“I’d like to. Because you’re my wife.”
I didn’t know who moved first. Maybe him. Maybe me. Or maybe we both leaned in at the same moment, drawn together by loneliness or desperation.
The kiss started soft. Two people testing boundaries, asking silent questions. Then his hand came up to cup my face, and I pressed closer, and somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, the questions stopped mattering.
He lifted me onto the balcony railing, his body pressing between my thighs, his mouth warm against my neck. Below us, the ranch slept. Above us, the stars burned. Nothing about this moment was what I’d expected when I woke up that morning.
“Is this okay?” he asked against my skin.
“Yes.”
“We don’t have to.”
I pulled his face back to mine. “I want to.”
He carried me to bed and laid me down on sheets that still smelled new. He hovered over me, breathing a little too fast, searching my face like he was giving me one last chance to change my mind.
“Rex.” I swallowed. “I’ve never done this.”
He went still, completely still. His eyes softened, something careful moving through them.
“Freya.” His voice dropped. “We can stop. Right now. I meant what I said, and I will never take more than you want to give.”
Before he could pull away, I caught his wrist. “That’s why I want it to be you.” Heat crawled up my throat. “I don’t know what I’m doing. But I don’t want to spend tonight lying next to a stranger. I want to know you. Like this.”
He let out a slow breath and pressed his forehead to mine. “Then we go slow. If it hurts, you tell me. If you want to stop, we stop. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got you.” He kissed me again, gentler than before. “You just tell me what you need.”
“Don’t treat me like I’ll break,” I whispered. “Just… be careful.”
“I can do that.”
He took his time. Asked before every touch, every kiss, every inch of skin he uncovered.
The nightgown slipped away. Then his shirt.
Then the rest. He paid attention to what made me gasp, what made me arch, what made my fingers tighten in his hair.
When his hand slid between my thighs I tensed, and he froze until I nodded.
“Please,” I said. “I’m okay. I want you to.”
“You’re wet,” he murmured against my mouth, like it undid him. “That’s it. Just feel this. You don’t have to do anything else.”
His fingers were careful. One, then two, stretching me while I breathed through it, while he kissed my throat and told me I was doing so well. It was too much and not enough at the same time.
“Rex.” His name came out like a prayer I hadn’t known I was holding. “I’m ready. Please.”
He looked at me like I was something precious. “I’ll go slow. You tell me if I hurt you.”
“I will. Just… don’t stop unless I say.”
“I won’t.”
He pushed in, and I gasped. The stretch burned, sharp and new, and he froze immediately, shaking with the effort of holding still.
“Breathe, Freya. I’ve got you.” His voice was wrecked. “God. You’re so tight. I’m not moving until you say.”
I breathed. The burn eased into fullness. I wrapped my legs around him, just a little, and felt him shudder.
“Okay,” I whispered. “You can move. Slow.”
“Slow,” he agreed, and he kept that promise.
It was nothing like the stories. It was better and worse and so much more human. Every careful stroke asked a question. Every time I said yes, he went a little deeper. His hand found mine on the pillow and held it. His other hand stayed on my hip, grounding me.
“You feel like everything,” he said against my cheek. “Talk to me. Tell me what you need.”
“Don’t stop. Kiss me. I want to feel you.”
He kissed me. The pain faded into something warmer. I started meeting his hips, clumsy at first, and he groaned like I’d wrecked him.
“That’s it. Just like that. You’re perfect. You’re doing so well for me.”
“Rex.” I held onto him. “I didn’t think it would feel like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like I know you.” My voice broke on it. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
I came quietly, almost surprised by it, clutching his shoulders, and he followed soon after, buried deep, my name on his mouth like something sacred.
When it was over, we lay together, my head on his chest, his heartbeat steady under my ear. The ceiling fan turned lazy circles above us. Outside, the sky was starting to lighten.
His hand traced slow patterns on my back. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” I smiled against his skin. “That wasn’t what I expected either.”
I felt him smile against my hair. “Good unexpected or bad unexpected?”
“Good. Definitely good.”
His arm tightened around me. “Then let’s keep surprising each other.”
Lying there in his arms, listening to his breathing slow as sleep finally claimed him, I let myself believe him. Let myself imagine that this strange marriage might actually become something real. That two strangers might learn to love each other and find happiness in the most unlikely of places.
I let myself hope.
And I would spend the next year wondering if I should have.