Yours, Now and Always (Only Yours #5)

Chapter 1

AMELIA

What most New York couples do when they decide to get married:

Get engaged.

Plan the wedding and honeymoon.

Apply for a marriage license.

Wait the 24-hour waiting period before the ceremony can take place.

Hold the ceremony and get married within sixty days.

I should have known that’s not what my man does when he decides to get married.

No, in true Gage Black fashion, he:

Day 1: Obtains the marriage license.

Day 2: Waits the 24-hour waiting period (that must have killed him).

Day 3: Gets married.

Holds the ceremony within sixty days but doesn’t give a damn when because he’s already my husband and that’s all he cares about.

Gage isn’t “most people.” As Marin would say, he’s spiritually handcuffed to me, emotionally and sexually feral, and logistically lethal.

He took me home from the gala and, after putting my collar back on me, made me beg for the cock that was already mine. It took many, many hours for that man to get his fill. Which, fair. I did make him wait three long months.

Then, he woke the next morning (yesterday) and told me we were getting the marriage license. That day. Which we did.

We talked about what we’d like our wedding day to be, but no plans were set in stone. That should have been my first warning flag that something was off. Gage is not the kind of man who doesn’t already know exactly how and when he plans to make me his.

This morning, he woke like it was just another day.

He fucked me. Twice before breakfast. Yes, he made me wake early for that and held his hand over my mouth to silence my screams from our daughters.

All with a look in his eyes that said, my hand’s over your mouth for them. Not for me. Never for me.

He helped me get the girls ready for school. We did drop-off together. Then we went our separate ways. Gage to his office, while I came home to work in my studio.

I’d only been in the studio for half an hour before the entire morning went sideways.

First, a producer emailed in full-blown panic over one of my cue changes. That cost me an hour. Time that a working mother simply does not have. Especially when she has to send very important files to another producer by eleven. Files that, by the way, aren’t quite finished.

And on top of that? My laptop has apparently decided that today is the day it might lie down, take a breath, and spiritually opt out of functioning. It’s glitching. Badly.

So now, it’s 10:55 a.m.

I’m frantically trying to generate link access while my file-sharing program keeps crashing.

I’ve started yelling at it like it might help in the middle of my are-you-actually-KIDDING-me-right-now spiral, when my elbow hits my mug and I spill coffee all over the sheet music I was working on, and all over my leggings.

Of course. Of course, I do.

“Oh my god, whyyyy?” I yell at the entire room as if it is to answer for all of this.

I ignore the spilled coffee. There’s no time for that right now.

My laptop finally decides I’m worth it and wakes from its existential crisis at 10:59 a.m. With not a minute to spare, it finally sends my link out into the ether.

I collapse in a heap and commence manically fake meditating. You know the kind. Where you’re muttering breathe in, breathe out while simultaneously internally plotting to throw your laptop into a river and forcefully manifesting peace like a psycho.

Do I get that moment of peace?

No. I do not.

Because that’s the exact moment the group chat with my brothers starts exploding.

Tim

SO YOU JUST DROPPED “we got the marriage license” yesterday and then ignored our chat? I NEED YOU TO UNDERSTAND HOW THAT LEVEL OF EMOTIONAL VIOLENCE AFFECTS PEOPLE, AMELIA.

Colin

Agreed. Rude.

Tim

I HAVE BEEN PREPARING FOR THIS MOMENT SINCE YOU FAKE DATED YOUR WAY TO ACTUAL DATING GAGE. I ALREADY HAVE A NOTES APP FOLDER CALLED “AMELIA BLACK WEDDING CHAOS PLAN.” DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE TABLESCAPE CONCEPTS OR NOT?

Me

Absolutely not. I regret telling you two anything.

Tim

OKAY BUT JUST ONE THING: What’s your vibe? Soft-glam? Vintage rock? Grunge-meets-Met-gala? We could do moody florals and black candles. Gage would thrive. Also, I will be wearing a velvet suit. This is not up for discussion.

Colin

Please do not overwhelm her. She probably hasn’t even eaten breakfast yet.

Tim

WHO NEEDS brEAKFAST WHEN THERE’S A DANGEROUS MAN TO WED? I HAVE BEEN MANIFESTING THIS FOR MONTHS. I AM INVESTED. I AM UNWELL.

Me

I am blocking this chat.

Tim

STOP IT. I’M TOO FRAGILE.

Tim

I’m sending the links to our new Pinterest board collaborations. One is titled “Gage Black Bridal Moodboard: Domesticated Edition.” The other is “Groom Thirst Trap Tux Inspo.” Pretty sure you’ll go feral over that one.

I toss my phone onto the couch because I cannot deal with their current level of overinvestment. Not when I’m hours behind, running on stress fumes, and my manifesting powers are working about as well as my glitchy-ass laptop, which is to say not at all.

Then, because this morning isn’t done with me, the building alarm goes off. The kind that screeches as if the universe is ending, and I have to evacuate with my laptop shoved under my arm like I’m saving my firstborn.

I stand on the sidewalk, no coat, coffee-stained leggings, arguing with my neighbor about whether her dog set it off again, when a delivery truck flies by and soaks me in actual street water.

I don’t mean a light splash.

I mean a baptism of Manhattan road grime.

So now I’m freezing, dripping, and starting to emotionally dissociate.

Once we’re cleared to go back inside (false alarm, obviously), I take the world’s fastest shower so I can get this grime off me and get back to work.

I’m now so far behind on the score I’m working on that I might just submit a rough piano demo with a voice memo that says, pretend it’s jazz, and pray no one notices.

Or better—I’ll score the next scene in silence and call it an artistic statement.

The sound of absence. Very chic. Very bold. Very someone save me.

Just as I’m towel-drying my hair and thinking I’ve maybe survived the worst of it, I get a call from Sarah’s school.

“Hi Amelia, sorry to bother you, but we do need that field trip form today or she won’t be able to go. Can you drop it in before noon?”

Before. Noon.

It’s 11:41.

So now I’m throwing on the least wrinkled thing I own, sprinting out the door with the form and the granola bar I didn’t get to finish this morning.

I speed walk into the school looking like a walking anxiety attack in a midi skirt and a T-shirt that says Feeling Fine even though I am not, in fact, fine.

The lies are printed in glitter. The cardigan I found on my way out is likely dirty and probably thrown on inside out.

And my hair is still not dry, tossed up into the most unbothered fuck-it bun in recorded history.

I hand the form in and then fly back to my condo, not bothering to manifest and not bothering to pray, because that kind of energy only works when your day hasn’t already been personally sabotaged by the universe.

At this point, I’m contemplating straight-up bartering with the devil.

Or firebombing my to-do list and pretending I’ve transcended earthly responsibilities.

I’ve been home two and a half whole minutes and am still panting when my elevator dings and Gage strides in like he owns the building, the city, and my rapidly deteriorating willpower.

He’s in a three-piece suit that screams foreplay.

No tie. Top buttons undone. And right there, resting against his chest, is his silver chain.

The one that keeps my collar key safe under his shirt.

He looks like he came here to bankrupt my resistance.

Like he’s the final boss between me and productivity.

And I immediately know I’m not getting anything else done today. Because this man has the audacity to stand there, silent, looking at me like I’m the next thing he’s going to ruin slowly and with intention.

My brain: Don’t do this. Don’t climb him. You have files.

My body: We have chosen chaos and Gage Black.

If he so much as says my name in that voice, I’m gone. I will dissolve into a puddle of undone womanhood and forgotten deadlines.

With full dramatic flair, I wave a finger down the length of his body. “All of this. Why is it here? You should be at work doing hostile takeover things.”

When he takes a step forward, I jab the air as if I’m casting a warding spell. “No. Do not take another step. I have files.”

His lips twitch, dangerously close to a smirk, but that look in his eyes? Unholy. Unmoving. Unfazed.

“Files.” He says it like a one-word sentence but makes it sound like a question.

“Yes, files. Work. That thing I do while you go do your thing. And my thing is very behind today and would like to know why your thing appears to have been entirely forgotten.”

He doesn’t answer.

He just keeps walking.

One step. Then another.

No hurry. No apology. Just that slow predatory calm that says, I already know what you’re going to do.

I backpedal. Trip over a shoe I didn’t know was there. Catch myself on the counter like that’ll protect me. It will not.

Gage stops in front of me and doesn’t even touch me. Doesn’t have to. He just looks down at me with that intense focus of his and says, “You’re flustered.”

“I’m not flustered,” I lie.

His gaze flicks down to the finger I forgot was still pointed at him. He catches my hand in his. Moves it gently to the side. Then leans in, mouth brushing my ear. “Tell your files they’ll have to wait.”

I go still because this isn’t Gage teasing or distracting me. Or showing up looking like an international scandal in a suit to turn me on. No, this is him doing that thing he does when he’s already decided something, and the world just hasn’t caught up yet.

That one line from him was calm and possessive in that Gage Black way that makes your soul whimper.