Married by Midnight

Chapter four - the wedding without vows

The courthouse smelled like rain and old paper. There wasn't any music, there wasn't any flowers, there was no family - there was only the sound of a flickering fluorescent light and the scratch of a pen on a government form.

Standing next to Damon Black was Emma. She was still caught in the storm and her coat was damp. She saw the clerk shuffling papers like he was in a rush to get out of there. She felt that her stomach twisted so tight it hurt.

This was her wedding day.

If you could call it that.

"Names?" "not look up" the clerk mumbled.

"Damon Black," came the smooth and distant reply.

“Emma Hale,” she whispered.

The clerk typed something into the computer and then pointed to the two witnesses at the door - one of Damon's bodyguards and a woman in a dark suit who had said nothing since they arrived. They resembled guards at an execution, and not guests at a ceremony.

All of the forms were put on the desk of the clerk and he said, "Everything's in order." “Just need signatures.”

Emma’s fingers trembled. Wedding Dress was a plain gray coat. Her bouquet was a few pieces of paper. No ring. No vows. Just an agreement that tied her life to a man she knew hardly at all.

A man who terrified her.

Beside her, Damon, was motionless. Every movement was at purpose - precise and cold. A single, sure stroke of his hand and he signed his name and then passed her the pen.

"Your turn, Mrs. Black," he said quietly.

Her throat locked. Mrs. Black. The title hit like a punch. She wanted to rip it off her name, shout that it wasn't true - but it was. Her father's debt, Damon's deal, the ink still fresh on the contract - they made it real.

Emma forced her hand steady. The pen had become less flighty than it had been, like it had all the weight of her decisions on it. She signed her name below his.

The pen dropped from her hands and fell on the desk.

The clerk looked up for the first time with a look of blinking as if he was recognizing who stood in front of him. Recognition flickered across his face - the billionaire that owned half the skyline, the trembling woman that he just claimed.

Acting perfectly serious, he had stamped the paper and said, "Congratulations." “You’re married.”

No music.

No applause.

Besides, a listless thunk of the seal.

Emma released the breath she hadn't realized was in her lungs. Damon's expression did not change. He picked up the documents, nodded curtly to the clerk and turned to go.

That was it.

Her wedding was over in half an hour.

The bodyguards opened the door and rain poured in from outside. Damon didn’t wait for her. He just walked down, his long strides sounding like a verdict as he walked down the courthouse hallway.

Emma followed with her heels clicking against the tile. She caught sight of their reflection in the glass doors - tall, dark powerful Damon - and her - small, uncertain, ghost-pale. The stranger next to her was now her husband.

Daddy, can you walk slower, she mumbled.

He decrescendoed by half a step, without turning. “You’ll need to learn to keep up.”

She scowled. "You could at least pretend to be a human being."

He glanced over his shoulder - eyes like ice. "Pretending is for people who care what other people think."

There was no room for softness in his tone. He pushed the door to the courthouse open and entered the storm.

City lights spread over the wet asphalt. A black car brushed with a shine of black sat on the curb, engine humming. The driver jumped out to open the door, but Damon waved him off. He turned to Emma instead.

“Get in.”

She hesitated. Even in making the choice of where to go next, do I have a choice?

“No,” he said simply. “Not tonight.”

The woman got into the back seat with a tightening of the jaw. Space between them thick with silence as Damon followed. As the car pulled away the rain ran like melted glass across the windows.

For a long moment neither said anything.

Then softly Emma said, "You could at least have pretended to care." A smile. A word. Something.”

Damon's eyes were fixed on the lights of the city. “Why lie?”

"And that's what people do at weddings," she snapped.

"We did not have a wedding." he responded with a low, smooth and final voice. “We had an agreement.”

The words burned through her like frost. "You seriously mean that's all there is to it?"

He glanced up at her, shook his head. “I know.”

She looked away biting her lip until it hurt. Out there the skyline faded away - the skyscrapers, the neon lights, the reflections of other people's lives. Lives that were no longer hers.

Emma looked down at her hands. No ring. No warmth. Just cold fingers clutching in her coat's hem,

You don't even wear a ring, she said half under her breath.

Damon responded: "I don't wear symbols." “They mean nothing.”

"They mean something to the person you are trapping with them."

He didn’t answer. His teeth gnashed together slightly, but he continued to look out the window. She couldn't tell if he was angry or amused - or both.

The silence went on until the car came to a stop outside his penthouse tower. The same glass fortress where she'd signed her death warrant.

The driver opened the door. Rain poured in again, wet and electrified.

Damon stepped out first and his umbrella snapped open with practiced precision. He held it above her, without looking directly at her. Just a gesture - no warmth, no intimacy.

She moved out to mutter, "No need to act chivalry now."

“I’m not,” he said. "I just do not want my wife to get pneumonia on her first night."

Wife did it differently this time, soft but sharp, silk on steel.

Without another word they entered the building. The trip up in the elevator was suffocating. Emma could hear her heart, fast and pulsating. Damon stood at her side, as calm as ever, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on numbers ticking upwards.

When the doors opened, the penthouse lay before her - huge, sleek and too quiet. Black marble floors, floor to ceiling glass, and a never-ending city below.

It was like stepping inside his brain - beautiful and controlled and terrifying.

He walked in front of the other, setting the documents of the wedding on a glass table. “You’ll move in tomorrow. My aide will be ordering your possessions.

Emma turned slowly with her voice barely a whisper. “That’s it? No… dinner? No toast to the happy couple?”

Damon looked at her then in dark unreadable eyes. Champagne or truth: Which do you prefer?

She crossed her arms. I'd rather have a human being than whatever you are pretending to be.

For the beat of his heart his eyes softened - only for a heartbeat. "Thou art not ready to see what I really am."

The air thickened between them again, that unnecessary tension and something she would not name. He moved closer, not close enough to touch, just close enough so she could feel the heat of him.

"You'll learn Emma," he said softly. “Every deal comes with a price. You are just waiting for yours to show up.

Her pulse jumped. "Then maybe you should tell me what it is."

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

He leaned forward slightly and his voice was little more than a whisper. "This is what I was saying to her, 'You think I married you to punish your father.' You’re wrong.”

She froze. “Then why—”

The sound of a phone buzzing disconnected him. He sat up immediately, face turning into a closed door. He responded in a clipped and professional manner.

“Black.”

Emma wished to feel invisible as she watched him.

“Yes,” Damon said into the phone. “It’s done. She signed. No, there won’t be a problem.”

Pause.

His jaw tightened. “Handle it. I do not want this getting to the board.

He dropped the phone and disconnected the call. When he looked back at her he was all business again.

“Be ready at eight,” he said. The driver will then take you to the tower.

She looked at him with shock in her eyes. "Is that how our wedding night ends?" You take one phone call and send me home like an assistant?"

He repeated: "Assistant?" his left eyebrow raised. “Assistants get paid.”

Her cheeks flushed red with rage. "You really are the devil, aren't you?"

A faint smile was playing on his mouth. "Halo Expectation" by Philip A. Blecha "You'll sleep easier once you stop expecting a halo."

Emma whirled around and made her way to the elevator, burning with anger and humiliation. She did not wait for him to follow her, she did not wait. The doors slid shut between them, but just before they closed, she caught one last look at him - standing there, alone, silent, watching her go.

For a second, she thought she saw something in his expression. Not anger. Not arrogance. Something else.

Regret.

Then the doors closed and she was gone.

Outside the city rumbled on, and behind her, Damon poured himself a drink he would never drink. He stared at the rain streaking down the glass, his reflection of the empty room.

He said nothing to others, "Better this way."

But it was the silence that followed that contradicted.