CHAPTER2:
1160 Words
The reception was almost convincing. People clinked glasses and smiled at us across candlelit tables, and Roman sat beside me like a man who had always planned to marry a stranger on a Tuesday morning. Composed and unreadable. Answering questions with exactly enough words to close the conversation.
I had champagne I wasn't drinking and a ring that still felt borrowed.
"You're holding your fork wrong," he said quietly.
I looked down. I was gripping it like a weapon.
I loosened my fingers. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize. Just breathe."
Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one who'd signed a legal document two hours before the ceremony with ink that was barely dry when the officiant started talking. He wasn't the one wearing someone else's dress, hemmed so fast the stitches were uneven at the left ankle.
He leaned slightly toward me to say something to a passing guest, and I caught the scent of him. Clean, warm, something underneath it, I couldn't name. My stomach tightened without permission.
I looked straight ahead.
"You're doing well," he said, when the guest moved on.
"I grew up watching my mother perform at dinner tables. I know how to sit still and look pleasant."
He was quiet for a moment. "That sounds exhausting."
"It was."
"Did she know? That you found it exhausting?"
"No. She thought I was proud of her." I picked up my water glass. "I was, sometimes. When she wasn't performing for people who didn't deserve the effort."
I felt him look at me, not a glance. An actual look, the kind that has weight to it.
"Why did you say yes?" he asked. Low enough that only I could hear.
"You know why. The money."
"That's the reason you gave yourself. I'm asking what actually made you say it."
I turned to look at him then, which was a mistake, because up close his eyes were darker than I'd registered before, and they were completely focused on me in a way no one's eyes had been in a long time.
"My sister has been the reason for every careful decision I've made for ten years," I said. "I thought maybe it was time to make one reckless one."
Something shifted in his face.
"And this qualifies as reckless for you."
"Marrying a man I've spoken to four times? Yes, Roman. This qualifies."
"Five times now," he said. "If you count, this morning."
"I wasn't sure that counted as a conversation."
"You negotiated terms and signed a contract. I'd call that a conversation."
His mouth curved, not a full smile. Just the beginning of one, like he'd caught himself before it got away from him. I looked back at my plate before I did something stupid like smile back.
My pulse was doing something I didn't trust.
*********************
The penthouse was quieter than I expected.
His housekeeper, a woman named Dora who looked at me with kind, careful eyes, showed me to my room. It was large and clean and entirely neutral, like a very expensive hotel room. Which I think was the point. A temporary space for a temporary wife.
I sat on the edge of the bed and finally let myself feel the day.
It came in waves; the note, the lobby, the altar, the dress that wasn't mine. The ring that now technically was. The moment the officiant said husband and wife and Roman looked at me sideways, just briefly, like he was checking I was still there.
I had been. I still was. I didn't entirely know what that meant yet.
A knock at the door.
Roman stood in the doorway, jacket gone, top button open. He looked human like this. Almost approachable. Like if you met him in a normal place under normal circumstances, you might forget for a moment what he was.
"Dora said, You didn't eat at reception."
"I wasn't hungry."
"You should eat." He held up a plate. actual food, something simple, rice and something warm, "She insists."
I almost smiled despite myself. "Your housekeeper feeds ambushed brides at midnight?"
"Dora feeds everyone. She thinks it's the solution to most problems." He paused. "She's usually right."
He set the plate on the dresser and didn't leave. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at me with that same focused, unhurried attention that I was starting to realize was just how he looked at things he was trying to understand.
"How are you?" he asked.
"Honestly?"
"Please."
"I feel like I fell off a building and somehow landed standing up. I'm not hurt, but I don't trust my legs yet."
He was quiet for a moment. "That's the most accurate description of shock I've heard."
"I work with numbers. I like precision."
"I know," he said simply, like a fact he'd had for a while. "You caught an accounting error in the reception venue's billing last week. The coordinator mentioned it. Said you flagged it without being asked."
I stared at him. "You remembered that."
"I remember things that tell me who a person actually is."
"And what does that tell you about me?"
"That you can't walk past something broken without trying to fix it," he said without judgment. Just observation. "Even when it's not your job."
The room felt smaller suddenly, not in a bad way. In the way of a space that has too much in it. Too much attention, too much quiet, too much of him standing there looking at me like I was something worth studying.
"Why did you pick Nora?" I asked. I hadn't planned to. "For the contract. There are a hundred women who would have agreed."
"She was referred to. She seemed uncomplicated." A pause. "I was wrong about that."
"She's not uncomplicated. She just hides it very well."
"Unlike you."
"I never learned how to hide things. I just learned not to say them out loud."
"Until tonight."
"Until tonight," I agreed.
He looked at me for a long moment. Something in his expression was different from anything I'd seen from him all day. Not calculating, not composed. Almost like curiosity, but warmer than that. Like he'd come in with one version of me already filed away in his head and was now quietly revising it.
"Go to sleep, Claire," he said finally. His voice was quieter now. "Tomorrow is just a day.”
He moved to leave.
"Roman," he stopped. "Thank you. For the food. For not making today worse than it had to be."
He turned back just slightly, not fully, like he was making himself not turn all the way.
"You made it easier than it should have been," he said. "I haven't forgotten that."
Then he was gone.
I sat with the plate in my lap and the ring on my finger.
r and something warm moving slowly through my chest that I absolutely could not afford to feel for this man.
Twelve months. That was all.
- Writer
