Heart and Heir

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"Whose number is that?" I asked.

"Unknown. A message with a photo, nothing else." The old woman took her phone back. "The guard says the car left at three. He was sober enough to drive, which is something."

"Then he's at the cottage."

"Apparently." She looked at me with those flat eyes. "Which brings me to the part you don't know, girl.

If Elias is not standing beside you at the altar on Saturday, the contract is void. Your stepfather's debt goes back to him, and you go back to your stepfather. I find another girl."

She said it the way you'd say you were out of milk.

Saturday was in four days.

I thought about my stepfather's kitchen, and his hands, and the debt that had never been mine to begin with. Then I thought about a man who'd called me a church mouse and walked out.

"I'll get him."

"I'm told it's a six-hour drive." The old woman turned for the door. "Take Marcus. He'll wait by the car."

The cottage was exactly as I'd left it, and I wasn't ready for that.

Same crooked porch. The blue door stuck in the frame, same as every August. Salt in the wind. For a second, standing on the gravel with my hand on the car door, I forgot why I'd come.

Elias sat on the porch step with a bottle between his boots.

He didn't look up. "She sent you."

"Your grandmother told me where you were."

"No. Somebody sent me." He turned the bottle in his hands. "A message came at midnight. A photo of this place and a line saying my bride wasn't who she claimed to be. No name. I drove out to see for myself."

"You drove six hours drunk because of one text."

"I wasn't drunk when I left." He lifted the bottle. "I was bored when I got here."

I sat down on the step, an arm's length from him.

"What did you find?"

"A house with your mother's coat still on the hook." He said it quietly. "And paintings on the wall. Yours, I think. There's a lot of sea in them."

I hadn't expected that. I hadn't expected it to hurt.

"She said I had a gift."

"You do." He paused. "I looked in the sketchbook I gave you, by the way. Before I gave it to you. I wanted to know what I was buying."

"That's a terrible thing to say."

"It's the truth." He almost smiled. "You're good, Anya."

The wind picked up. Behind us, in the car, Marcus stared very hard at the horizon.

"Elias. If you're not at the wedding, I lose everything."

"I know."

"And you? What happens to you?"

He was quiet for a long time.

"Nothing I'm not used to." He drank. "You looked at me yesterday like you were afraid of me and also couldn't stop looking. Do you know how rare that is? Everyone else looks at me like I'm already dead."

"Maybe you act like it."

"Maybe." His eyes came to mine. "You're not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"A gold digger. A smile and a plan."

"I'm trapped. I don't have time to plan."

He laughed, a real one, the first I'd heard from him that wasn't cruel. Then he held out the bottle.

"I don't drink."

"Then why are you here?"

I took it. The whiskey burned the whole way down. He watched me do it.

"Hate me," he said, softly. "It'll be easier."

"I do."

"Good."

He was going to kissed me, and it was nothing like I'd braced for. he asked if i was ready, I had no answer to it. His hand was in my hair and the door was open behind us, and for a long while there was nothing in the world except the sound of the sea and the fact that I didn't want him but then i must get him to the alter, so i let him, even though he smelled bad, it escalated......

---

I woke up with sunlight on the floorboards and his arm heavy across my waist.

He was already awake, watching me.

"How long?"

"A while."

"Why didn't you move?"

"Didn't want to."

I sat up and found my dress. He didn't look away, and neither of us said anything about it.

"This doesn't change anything," he said.

"I know."

"I still can't stand you."

"I know." I pulled the zipper up. "You're lying."

"So are you."

---

The wedding was small and fast and cold. Four days later, on Saturday, I stood in white beside a man who didn't squeeze my hand once, and the old woman's face did not move at all, and I signed again. By the end of the week I'd stopped counting how many times I'd signed.

Five weeks went by. Elias and I barely spoke. We passed in the hallways like strangers in a hotel. At night I heard him down the corridor, awake, and I stayed awake too, and neither of us ever knocked.

On the thirty-sixth day the old woman stood outside the bathroom door while I took the second test.

Two lines.

"Good girl," she said, and went to call somebody.

I stared at the wall. Pregnant. Wanted for exactly one reason, to be handed over later like a parcel. I'd known this was the deal. I'd said "fine". I hadn't known it would feel like falling down a stairwell in the dark.

---

I found him in the library with a glass in his hand.

I held up the test. He took it, looked at it, looked at me.

Then he laughed. It wasn't cruel. It was worse, a little broken.

"Of course it worked. Congratulations."

"I didn't want this."

"Neither did I."

He tried to pass me. I caught his sleeve.

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't touch me." His voice cracked on the second word. "If you touch me, I'll want you to keep going. And I can't. Not now."

we both left in opposite directions and the door didn't slam, and that was worse than if it had.

---

I couldn't sleep that night. Around two, He jiggled into my room like a thief and sat against the side of my bed, on the carpet, back to me.

"Couldn't sleep," he said.

"Me neither."

"Tell me about her. Your mother."

I was quiet a while. "She taught art at a school nobody's heard of. She never sold a painting. She used to say it didn't matter if the gift was never paid for, as long as you kept using it."

"She was right."

"Was she?"

"No idea. I've never had one." He turned his head a little. "Why did I give you the sketchbook, you want to know? You looked like you needed something that was only yours. Something they couldn't take."

I reached down and took his hand. He looked at our fingers like they belonged to someone else.

"This is a bad idea," he said.

"I know."

"Anya. Somebody sent me to that cottage. Somebody who knows exactly where you come from, and wanted me to doubt you." His grip tightened. "I'm going to find out who. And I'm not going to let anyone use you."

"Why?"

He took a moment. "I don't know yet. But it's not the contract."

That was the whole speech, and it was enough. When he stood and pulled me up and said, "Tell me to leave," I said, "I don't want you to," and he kissed me slowly, like we had all the time in the world.

We didn't.

---

I woke to an empty bed and a note on the pillow.

Gone to find answers. Lock your door. I'll be back before you miss me.

E.

I smiled at it. I'd like to say I didn't.

Then I heard shouting from downstairs, and the smile died.

The old woman stood in the foyer with her coat already on. Furious, white around the mouth.

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. He left a note."

"Of course he did." She crossed the marble in three strides and took my arm. Her rings bit into me. "Get your shoes. You're coming with me."

"Where?"

"To meet someone." She was steering me to the door. "A man I should have introduced weeks ago. If my grandson doesn't fall in line, he is the one who inherits everything. And he has been so eager to meet you."

The study door was already open. A man stood by the window with his back to us, in a gray suit, calm, like he'd been there all morning.

He turned.

He smiled at me as if we'd met.

"Anya," he said. "Your stepfather said you'd be taller."