Contracted To My Rival

The terms.

ARIA.

We meet three days later in my conference room to go through the terms.

My lawyers are on one side of the table, his on the other, the two sets being professionally pleasant at each other in the way of people who know they'll be adversaries eventually and are keeping it civil for now. Kael and I sit across the glass table from each other and go through every clause line by line. No assistants, no buffer. Just we and the document and the kind of tension that fills a room when two people are both trying very hard not to acknowledge it.

I've read every clause four times. I know exactly which ones I'll hold and which I'll move on. I walk into this room the way I walk into all of them, ready.

He walks in two minutes after me. Doesn't apologies for the two minutes. Sits down, picks up the document, and starts reading.

Slowly. Deliberately slowly, each page turned like there's nowhere else he has to be, like the world can wait while he reads my lawyers' language at his own pace. I have my own copy in front of me. I watch him without looking like I'm watching him, which is a reflex I developed at some point specifically for this man.

Page two. He stops.

"This clause." He taps it without looking up. "Separate social engagements. It's too broad."

"It's standard."

"If we show up to the same events on opposite sides of the room the press will clock it in a week. It looks like a bad marriage."

"We'll do joint appearances sometimes. That's sufficient."

"Not with the press watching how we behave. Which they will be, constantly."

I don't say anything. He's right and we both know it and I don't enjoy that.

"Fine. Joint appearances, minimum twice monthly."

"Three times."

"Two." I say plainly, not ready for a back and forth bickering.

"Two and a half,” he says, and the edge of his mouth moves.

"That's not a number." I hiss out, annoyed.

"Then let's say three and underperform."

I write two in the margin. He lets it go. Probably because he got what he actually wanted, which was to watch me write it.

We work through the rest. It takes an hour. Most of it is clean, separate assets, no joint financial decisions without written consent, legally valid but operationally independent, twelve-month end date. He doesn't fight me on the things I expected him to. He's either genuinely reasonable or he's saving something for later, and I don't know which, and I don't like not knowing.

Then he reaches page five.

He reads it. Goes still in a way that's different from his usual stillness, more focused, like something's snagged his full attention. He reads it again.

Looks up at me. "This clause says neither party may enter a romantic or intimate relationship with a third party during the term."

"Standard. For appearances." I say.

"It also says—” he looks back at the page and I can already hear the faint amusement in his voice before he reads it "—both parties agree to exercise restraint in interactions with each other that could be construed as romantically or physically compromising."

A short silence. "My lawyers included that." I say, my voice sounding defending.

"I can see that." He sounds amused, his lips forming a smile.

"It's standard language." I gritted out.

"It's very specific language." He sets the document flat on the table and looks at me. Just looks. "Did you ask them to include it?"

"That's not relevant." My tone sharped at the end of that sentence, I was slowly getting irritated.

"Aria."

My name. No decoration on it, no softening, just my name said directly, like a door being knocked on. I hate what it does to my concentration.

"It was a precaution,” I say. "So there's no ambiguity between us."

"Right." And then slower, turning the word over: "No ambiguity."

He holds my gaze for a second longer than he needs to. Then he picks up his pen, moves it to the clause, and I watch his hand, I’m sure he's about to cross it out, challenge it, make it an issue, and instead he signs his initials beside it. Approved.

I look at his initials for a moment and I sign my initials on my copy and move on.

…

The last page. Signature lines.

My pen in my hand. His pen in his hand. Thirty floors below us the city does what the city does, completely indifferent.

"Last chance,” he says. Not as a threat. More like he's genuinely leaving a door open.

"I don't need one."

"I know you don't." He looks at me steadily. "I'm telling you anyway. If there's another way to protect your position, another path, and you don't want this, say so now and we walk out of here and you never have to deal with me again."

I think about my father. The way he looks at me in board meetings — not like a daughter, not even like a colleague, but like a piece on a board he's moving toward a square he's already chosen. I think about Austin's smile with its carefully maintained ceiling. I think about what Helena built over eighty years and what it becomes without someone prepared to hold the line.

I think about two cages. The one I'm looking at and the one I'd walk into without it.

"Sign the document, Kael."

A beat. Then he signs. I sign below him.

Done. Engaged, on paper. Married in twenty-eight days. Divorced in twelve months. Controlled, clean, exactly according to plan.

I start stacking my copy.

"One more thing,” he says.

"What?" I ask, brows raised.

"I want to meet your grandmother before she dies."

I go still. "Why?"

"She kept a promise to my mother. I want to thank her for it." I look at him. He looks back, completely steady, no angle in it that I can find.

"I'll arrange it,” I say.

"Thank you." He gathers his documents. Stands. Gets to the door and pauses with his hand on the handle, not turning around.

"For what it's worth, I'm going to take this seriously. The year. All of it. I'm not here to take anything from you."

"I know,” I say.

He leaves. The door closes and I sit in the empty conference room with a signed contract in front of me and everything in order and the plan exactly where it should be.

So I can't explain why it feels like something just slipped out of my hands.