Somewhere Between Us

Chapter 2: The Proposal

The building didn't look real. That was Zoey's first thought as she stood on the sidewalk outside Sterling Tower, craning her neck at glass that seemed to disappear into the clouds rather than end. Her second thought was that she'd worn the wrong shoes for a lobby with floors so reflective.

"Ms. Adams?" A young man in a suit that probably cost more than her rent materialized at her elbow. "This way, please."

The elevator ride to the fortieth floor was silent except for a soft chime with each passing level, and by the time the doors opened, Zoey had rehearsed and discarded four different opening lines. In the end, none of them mattered, because Dylan Sterling was already standing at the far end of an office the size of her entire apartment, looking exactly as insufferable as she remembered.

"You came," he said, like he'd been running a private bet on it.

"You had my number. It seemed easier than being tracked down."

"I wouldn't have tracked you down. I'd have sent someone more charming."

"Charming enough to lower his voice in coffee shops?"

"Low blow." He gestured to the chair across from his desk, and she sat, spine straight, bag held on her lap like a shield. He didn't sit right away. He studied her instead, arms crossed, the playfulness dimming just slightly into something more assessing. "I'll get to the point, since I imagine you have somewhere to be."

"I have several somewheres to be, actually. This is cutting into somewhere number two."

"Then I'll be quick." He finally sat, folding his hands on the desk. "I need a wife."

Zoey blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Not romantically. Contractually." He said it the way other people announced lunch plans, unbothered, efficient, like the words hadn't just detonated in the middle of her afternoon. "I'm closing a deal with an investment group that cares, inexplicably, about the personal stability of the people they do business with. Married men, in their experience, default less. Divorce less. Embarrass the company less. My lawyers tell me this is an outdated and faintly insulting metric. My lawyers also tell me the deal is worth four hundred million dollars, so here we are."

"Here we are," she repeated faintly.

"One year. A legal marriage, fully documented, entirely for appearances. Separate lives behind closed doors, a convincing one in public. At the end of it, we file for a quiet divorce and go back to never having met." He said the last part almost cheerfully, like he found the simplicity of it satisfying. "In exchange, I would make it worth your considerable while."

"Worth my—" She stopped herself, because her voice had done something undignified on the word while. "Why me? You met me four days ago. You don't know anything about me."

"I know you weren't impressed by my watch," He said lightly, but there was something underneath it, something more deliberate than the joke let on. "I know you didn't ask what I do before deciding you didn't like me. Most people run the numbers on me before they've finished shaking my hand. You didn't run any numbers at all. You just told me to shut up."

"That's not exactly a character reference."

"It's the only one that matters to me right now." He leaned back, and for a second the smirk was gone entirely. "The people I need to convince are sharp. They'll be looking for a performance. I don't need someone who's overwhelmed by money, I need someone who isn't impressed by it, because that's the only kind of wife who'll read as real."

She wanted to ask how he'd learned so much about her circumstances in four days, wanted to ask, specifically, whether "sharp people looking for a performance" had also spent those four days looking into her mother's medical bills and her brother's cleats, but some instinct told her the answer would only make her more uncomfortable, not less. So she filed the question away instead of asking it.

"And if I say no?"

"Then I find someone else, and you go back to your two jobs, and we never speak again." He shrugged, easy as anything. "I'm not going to pretend I need you specifically. I need someone. You happen to be sitting in the chair."

It should have offended her. Instead, oddly, she believed him more for the honesty of it. "How much?"

He told her the number.

She didn't flinch, though it took real effort not to. It was the kind of number that rearranged a life, paid off her mother's medical debt in full, covered years of tuition, let her breathe for the first time since she'd been nineteen years old, learning to grieve and budget in the same terrible week. She thought of her father, of pride being the most expensive thing a person could own, and wondered, not for the first time, whether he'd meant it as a warning or a boast.

"There are conditions," Dylan said, watching her think. "My family will be involved in the public parts of this. Weddings, holidays, appearances. My stepmother, especially, she'll want to be seen helping. Photographs. That sort of thing." Something flickered across his face when he said stepmother, almost gone before she registered it. "You don't need to like any of them. You just need to be convincing."

"That sounds ominous."

"It's family. Family's always a little ominous." He said it lightly, deflecting the way she was starting to recognize he deflected everything that mattered. "There are also things I won't discuss. My father's estate. Certain... complications from before I ran this company. None of that is part of the arrangement, and I'd ask you not to go looking."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Good." He held her gaze a beat too long, like he was checking whether she meant it, before the smirk came back, easier now that the hard part was over. "So. Do we have a deal, Ms. Adams?"

She thought of the rent stacked by the door. She thought of her mother's face when the pharmacist quoted the new co-pay. She thought of Micah, twelve years old and trying so hard not to ask for anything, and of the particular ache of watching a kid learn too early that wanting things was expensive.

She also thought, treacherously, of the way Dylan Sterling had looked at her across a coffee shop table like she was a puzzle worth solving, and reminded herself, sternly, that this was a transaction and nothing more.

"I can't," she said, and stood before she could second-guess the words out of her own mouth. "I'm sorry. This is, it's a lot, and I don't think I can just sign my life away to a stranger over an hour, no matter how many zeroes are involved."

Dylan didn't move to stop her, though something crossed his face, surprise, maybe, quickly smoothed back into indifference. "All right," he said, easy as anything, like she'd declined a second coffee rather than four hundred million dollars' worth of borrowed dignity. "The offer stands, if you change your mind."

"I won't."

"Sure," he said, in the tone of a man who'd clearly heard that particular lie before and didn't mind being lied to.

She left with her pride mostly intact and her hands shaking only slightly in the elevator.

For two days, she told herself she'd made the right call. She told Priya nothing. She told her mother nothing. She sat with the decision the way she sat with every decision that mattered, turning it over at two in the morning, in line at the pharmacy, on the subway with her laptop open to a bank statement that got no less depressing no matter how many times she refreshed it.

On the second night, the pharmacy called about her mother's refill. The new co-pay had gone up again. Zoey stood in the kitchen with the phone against her ear, said "of course, I'll be right in," and hung up to find she'd been quietly doing the math the entire time without meaning to, rent, cleats, medication, the slow arithmetic of barely, barely enough, and none of it, not one single column, balanced without four hundred million dollars in it somewhere.

She hated that he'd been right. She hated more that she was about to prove it.

She showed up at Sterling Tower unannounced the next morning, which felt like a small act of self-respect right up until she was standing in the elevator, staring at her own reflection in the polished doors, rehearsing dignified sentences that all sounded, even to her, like exactly what they were.

Dylan looked up from his desk when his assistant let her in, and the smile that spread across his face was slow, delighted, and completely without mercy.

"Ms. Adams." He leaned back in his chair like he'd been expecting her, which, infuriatingly, he probably had. "To what do I owe the pleasure of round two?"

"Don't."

"I haven't said anything."

"You're about to. I can see it building."

"I would never." He folded his hands, the picture of innocence, and let the silence stretch just long enough to be unbearable. "Did the offer happen to still be standing, by any chance? Since you were so certain you wouldn't be needing it."

"I hate you a little."

"Noted. Is that a yes?"

"It's a—" She exhaled, pride and necessity finally finishing their negotiation somewhere behind her ribs. "It's a yes. One year. In writing. Every condition, every dollar, before I sign anything."

"Of course it is." He was already reaching for the folder, still sitting exactly where it had been two days ago, which told her more than she wanted to know about how certain he'd been of this outcome the entire time. "Take your time deciding, by the way. No rush. I only sat here for two days wondering if I'd have to advertise for a wife like a lost dog."

"I said don't."

"I'm simply narrating events as they occurred." He slid the folder across the desk, and beneath the teasing, for just a second, something more genuine flickered through, relief, maybe, or something adjacent to it. "Welcome back, Ms. Adams. Try to make it stick this time."

She picked up the pen before she could talk herself out of it a second time. "Let's get married, Mr. Sterling."

"There it is." His grin didn't fade the entire time she signed.