Married By Mistake

Chapter Eleven: Somewhere That Isn't a Courthouse

Jax's POV

I picked the park because it felt neutral. No piano. No courthouse. No ghosts hiding in the corners waiting to say my old name out loud.

Just benches, and a fountain that hadn't worked right in years, and enough space between us that neither of us had to sit close if we didn't want to.

I got there early. Sat with my hands in my pockets, watching people walk their dogs past me like it was any other day, running through a dozen versions of what I might say and discarding every single one before she showed up.

Elena showed up in jeans. First time I'd seen her in anything that wasn't built for a boardroom or a wedding.

"You look different," I said.

"I look like a person who isn't currently on the clock."

"It's a good look."

She sat down on the far end of the bench, careful, like she was choosing the distance on purpose. "You don't have to tell me anything else. I meant what I texted. It's yours to tell."

"I know. That's kind of why I want to."

I hadn't planned what I was going to say. I never do. But something about her not pushing made it easier than it should have been.

"I started when I was four," I said. "Piano. My mom noticed I could hear things other kids couldn't. Pick out a melody after hearing it once. By six I had a teacher who only worked with, quote, serious talent."

"That's young."

"Too young, probably. I didn't have a normal childhood. I had competitions. I had a schedule that made yours look relaxed."

She almost smiled at that. Almost.

"By fifteen I was playing concert halls. By eighteen I was supposed to be the next big thing. Vienna was the one that mattered most. The one everyone said would decide everything."

There'd been a piece I wrote myself for that stage. Months of work. I'd been proud of it once, before it became the thing people only ever mentioned to remind me of what came after.

I could feel my hands doing the thing again. Tapping against my knee, quiet, automatic. I made myself stop.

"What happened there?" she asked. Gentle. Not pushing, just leaving the door open in case I wanted to walk through it.

"I froze. Middle of the piece, in front of everyone who mattered in that world, my hands just stopped working. Like my whole body forgot how to do the one thing it had been trained to do since I was four years old."

"That sounds terrifying."

"It was the worst two minutes of my life, and it happened in front of a room full of people who'd spent years telling me I was the future of the instrument." I looked at the broken fountain instead of her. Easier that way. "After that, I couldn't walk into a room with a piano in it without my hands shaking. So I stopped walking into those rooms."

"And started walking dogs."

"And started walking dogs." I let out a breath that felt like the first real one I'd taken in days. "Nobody expects anything from a guy holding four leashes. That's kind of the whole appeal."

Elena was quiet for a moment, watching the water not move in the fountain.

"Thank you for telling me," she said finally. "I know that cost you something."

"Yeah. It did." I glanced over at her. "Feels weird that it doesn't cost as much as I thought it would. Telling you, I mean."

Something shifted in her face when I said that. Small. Like she felt the same thing and didn't know what to do with it either.

We sat there a while longer, not saying much, just two people who'd stopped performing for each other for once. It was the easiest silence I'd had with anyone in years.

I found myself thinking that if someone had told me a week ago I'd say all that out loud to a stranger I accidentally married, I'd have laughed them out of the room. And yet here we were, and the sky hadn't fallen, and she was still sitting next to me instead of running.

Then her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, and I watched her whole posture change in half a second, the ease draining right out of her shoulders.

"What," I said.

"Julian. He's here. In the city, not at home, he says he wants to surprise me, he's ten minutes away from my apartment—"

Her phone buzzed again before she could finish the sentence. She turned it so I could see the screen without meaning to, and I read the message over her shoulder.

Julian: Priya just told me you're at the park with someone. I'm heading there now.