Married By Mistake

Chapter Twenty-Two: Yes, Before Thinking

Elena's POV

I told him.

All of it. Regina finding the story, the offer dressed as a favor, the wedding appearance she wanted, the veiled threat about pulling her business if I said no. I watched his face while I said it, waiting for the moment it would close off completely.

It didn't close off. It just went very still, the same stillness from the crosswalk that first week, the one I now understood came from somewhere old and practiced.

"So she wants to put me on display," he said, quiet. "At a wedding. As a story."

"Yes. And I told her no. I want you to know that. My first answer was no."

"But you're thinking about it now."

"I'm thinking about a lot of things right now, and none of them are good options." I sat down across from him instead of beside him, needing the space to say the rest of it honestly. "If I refuse, I could lose her business, which could cost people at my firm their jobs during a slow season. If I agree, I'm handing you over to exactly the kind of exposure you spent six years avoiding."

"So either way somebody loses."

"Yeah."

He was quiet for a long moment, turning his wine glass in his hands the way he'd done all evening. I could see him doing the math the way I do math, except his math had a different shape than mine, less about outcomes and more about what he could live with.

"What if I say yes," he said.

My stomach dropped. "What?"

"What if I just go. Let her seat me wherever she wants, let people whisper, let it be exactly the story she wants it to be for one night." He said it lightly, the way he says things when he's trying to make a hard decision sound easier than it is. "It's one evening. You keep your client. Your firm's fine. I've survived worse rooms than a wedding reception."

"Jax, no."

"Why not? It solves the actual problem."

"Because you spent six years building a life so nobody would ever look at you like that again, and I am not going to be the reason it happens. Not for a client. Not for my business. Not for anything."

"I'm offering. You didn't ask me to."

"That doesn't make it okay. You're doing the thing you do, saying yes before you've actually thought about what it costs you." My voice cracked slightly on that, more than I wanted it to. "I've watched you deflect and joke your way past every hard thing all week, and this is the same pattern. You're not offering because you've weighed it. You're offering because it's easier than admitting how much it would hurt."

Something flickered across his face, and I knew I'd landed closer to the truth than either of us was comfortable with.

"Maybe I'm just trying to help you," he said. "Is that so hard to believe?"

"It's not hard to believe. It's hard to accept, knowing what it would actually cost you to do it."

"Let me decide what it costs me. That's kind of the whole point of it being my choice."

We stared at each other across the small distance of my living room, both of us breathing harder than the conversation should have warranted. I thought about the six years of careful invisibility he'd built, brick by brick, dog leash by dog leash, specifically so this exact scenario could never happen to him again.

I thought about how easily he was offering to tear it down for me.

"I don't want you to do this," I said finally. "I mean that. Whatever happens with Regina, whatever it costs my firm, I don't want this to be the price."

"And if I want to do it anyway?"

"Then I guess we're going to disagree about something that's actually your life to decide, and I don't know how to sit with that."

He set his wine glass down, stood up, and for a second I thought he was going to leave the way he'd left the courthouse that day, fast, without looking back.

Instead he crossed the small distance between us and stood close enough that I had to tip my head up to look at him.

"I'll think about it," he said quietly. "I won't decide tonight. But Elena, if it comes down to it, I might say yes anyway. Not because I don't understand what it costs. Because for once in six years, I might actually think something's worth the cost."

He left a few minutes later, gentle about it, nothing like the last time. I stood in my apartment long after the door closed, replaying that last sentence, terrified by exactly how much I understood what he meant by it.