Straight Lies

Chapter 5: The Promise She Couldn't Keep

Brett was already waiting when Ghayle arrived at their usual restaurant — the same corner booth they'd claimed since college, the same easy smile that had once made every hard day feel survivable.

Tonight, though, she couldn't make herself smile back.

"You look like you're about to tell me something terrible," Brett said, setting down his menu the moment she slid into the booth across from him. "Should I be worried?"

Ghayle reached for his hand before she'd fully decided to, needing the anchor of it before she let the words out. "I'm getting married, Brett."

His fork, halfway to his mouth, froze completely. "What?"

"For my family. For the company." She forced herself to keep going before she lost her nerve entirely. "There's no other way to save it. My parents have already agreed to the terms."

"Terms," Brett repeated slowly, setting down his fork with deliberate care, as if the sudden stillness in his hands was the only thing keeping the rest of him from shaking. "Ghayle, what terms? Who?"

"A woman." Ghayle's voice wavered slightly. "Alexa Sterling."

The name meant nothing to him — she watched the blankness in his expression before it slowly shifted, confusion giving way to something more complicated. "A woman," he repeated. "You're marrying a woman. For business."

"Yes."

For a long moment, Brett said nothing at all, and Ghayle braced herself for anger, for the kind of hurt that came with raised voices and slammed doors. Instead, when he finally spoke, his voice was quiet — quieter than she had ever heard it.

"Do you know how much I love you, Ghayle?"

Her eyes stung immediately. "I know."

"Six years." He laughed, but there was no humor in it, only something raw and disbelieving. "Six years, and I finally thought — I really thought, this year, that I was going to ask you to marry me. I had a ring picked out. I was waiting for the right moment."

The confession landed like a physical blow, and Ghayle felt her carefully held composure crack straight down the middle. "Brett, I didn't know—"

"Of course you didn't know," he said, though not unkindly. "I hadn't told you yet. I wanted it to be a surprise." He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down his face, some of the initial shock settling into something more resigned. "I guess it doesn't matter now."

"It matters," Ghayle said quickly, desperately. "You matter. This doesn't change how I feel about you."

"Doesn't it?" He looked at her then, searching her face with an intensity that made her want to look away. "Because it sounds like you're about to marry someone else."

"On paper," Ghayle said. "Only on paper. It's not real, Brett. Not the way we are."

Brett was quiet for a long moment, processing, his jaw working as he clearly fought against several different responses before settling on one.

"Alright," he said finally, and something in the careful calm of his voice frightened her more than anger would have. "Then I want a promise from you."

"Anything."

"When the company recovers — when you don't need this marriage anymore — you divorce her. You come back to me, and we finally have the life I've been waiting six years to build with you." His eyes held hers, unwavering. "Can you promise me that?"

Ghayle didn't hesitate. Couldn't afford to hesitate, not with the weight of everything crashing down around her all at once. "I promise."

Something in Brett's shoulders eased slightly at the words, though the wound in his eyes remained. He reached across the table and took her hand again, tighter this time, as if sealing the vow between them with the pressure of his grip alone.

"I'll wait," he said quietly. "However long it takes. I waited six years already. I can wait a little longer."

"You shouldn't have to wait at all," Ghayle whispered, guilt twisting sharp beneath her ribs. "This isn't fair to you."

"None of it's fair," Brett agreed, "but I'd rather have an unfair version of you eventually than no version of you at all."

They sat like that for a long while, hands clasped tightly across the table, neither of them speaking, the noise of the restaurant fading into background static around the fragile promise stretched between them.

It wasn't until much later that night, lying alone in her childhood bedroom with the promise still fresh and raw in her chest, that Ghayle allowed herself to wonder — quietly, guiltily — what kind of woman would agree to marry a stranger while making promises to someone else entirely.

She told herself it didn't matter. That the marriage was nothing, a formality, a means to an end that would dissolve the moment her family's company was safe again.

She had no way of knowing, lying there in the dark, how impossibly heavy that promise would become to carry — or how much harder it would be to keep, once the woman she was about to marry stopped feeling like a stranger at all.

Her phone buzzed once on the nightstand, cutting through the quiet. A message from an unfamiliar number, forwarded through her mother's assistant.

This is Alexa. The wedding has been moved up — three days from now. I thought you should hear it from me directly, rather than a lawyer.

Ghayle stared at the screen for a long time before she found the nerve to type back a single word.

Understood.

She set the phone down, heart pounding, and stared into the darkness of her room, suddenly, achingly aware that whatever fragile promise she'd just made to Brett, she had only three days left to prepare herself for a marriage she didn't yet understand she was about to fall into — not just legally, but completely.