Beautiful Lies

Chapter 5: The Aftermath

Eva didn’t remember the drive.

One second she was in her car outside Nana’s house, hands locked around the wheel, and the next, she was standing outside Jayden’s door, keys shaking too hard in her fist to fit the lock. He opened it before she managed it, took one look at her face, and then pulled her inside without a single question.

She made it as far as the couch before her legs gave out from under her.

“Hey. Hey, I’m here.” He dropped to his knees in front of her, hands cupping her face, thumbs catching the tears before they’d even finished falling. “Eva. Talk to me.”

She couldn’t, not at first. Her chest was doing something strange and tight, breath coming in short pulls that didn’t feel like enough air, her whole body shaking in a way she couldn’t order it to stop. When the words finally came, they came in pieces, broken apart by the sobs pushing through them.

“She… She just said it. In front of everyone. Like she was announcing a merger.” Eva pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “She arranged my marriage, Jayden. Like I’m a… like I’m something you sign paperwork for.”

“Okay. Okay, breathe.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Her voice cracked, climbed, and she didn’t try to smooth it back down. “This isn’t new. This is just the biggest one. My whole life, she’s been doing this. Picking my schools, my tutors, my internships, deciding what’s best for me without asking, and I let her, because I thought — I don’t know what I thought. That eventually she’d stop treating me like something she gets to place wherever she wants.”

Her hands curled into fists against her knees. “She’s never going to stop,” Eva said, quieter now, the fight draining out of her voice and leaving something hollow behind. “I’m twenty-five years old and she still thinks she owns the decisions in my life.”

Jayden pulled her into his chest, one hand moving in slow circles against her back, and she let herself go boneless against him, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

“This is going to pass,” he said with a low tone, with his mouth close to the top of her head. “I promise you that. Whatever she thinks she’s arranged, it doesn’t happen unless you say yes. And you’re not going to say yes.”

“She won’t listen to me.”

“Then she’ll have to listen to both of us.” His hand stilled against her back, and when he pulled away enough to look at her, his eyes were calm in a way that startled her a little, steady in a way that felt almost separate from the moment. “I’m not going anywhere, Eva. Whatever comes out of this, I’m in it with you. All the way.”

She glanced at him for a second, searching his face for the anger she’d expected to find there, the jealousy, the fear— something that matched the wreckage she felt inside her own chest. It wasn’t there. He looked almost unbothered, like it was a weather system he’d already read the forecast for.

“You’re not even mad,” She said, and it came out half question, half accusation. “I just told you my grandmother arranged for me to marry someone else, and you’re… you’re calm. How is that possible? Any other person would be losing it right now.”

Something crossed his face, quick, gone before she could name it.

“I’m not other people.” He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear while his thumb lingered against her cheek. “I love you. That’s not something a piece of paper Nana signs can undo. So no— I’m not panicking because panicking doesn’t fix anything, and because nothing about how I feel about you has changed in the last hour. I’ll walk whatever road this turns into. With you. That’s it. That’s the whole plan.”

Eva let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, something in her chest loosening just slightly, just enough. She leaned into his hand, closing her eyes, letting the steadiness of his voice do what her own body couldn’t manage on its own.

“I’m scared,” she admitted, very slowly that it barely left her mouth. “I don’t even know what she’s capable of. She got a whole room full of family to just — sit there. Nod along. Like it was already decided before I walked in.”

“It probably was.” Jayden’s jaw tightened, the first real flicker of something sharp crossing his features. “But it’s not decided now. Not really. Not unless you let it be.”

She nodded against his hand, not quite believing it yet, but wanting to. He pulled her back into him, and she let her body fold into the shape of him, listening to his heartbeat under her ear, steady and unhurried, nothing like the storm still turning over inside her own chest.

Neither of them spoke for a long time after that. The room stayed dim, one lamp burning low in the corner, and somewhere outside a siren rose and faded into the dark. Eva’s tears slowed eventually, then stopped, leaving her hollowed out and heavy-limbed against him.

“Stay here tonight,” Jayden murmured into her hair, his hand still moving slow circles against her back. “You don’t have to talk to her tomorrow, either, if you’re not ready.”

“I don’t want to be anywhere else.” Eva pressed closer into him, letting her eyes shut, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat under her ear finally starting to slow her own. “Just this. Just here.”

He pulled the throw blanket down off the back of the couch and settled it over both of them without letting go of her, and for the first time since she’d stood up from that table, Eva felt something in her chest ease all the way down. Whatever came next – Nana, the wedding, the whole impossible mess of it— it could wait until morning. Right now, this was enough.