Married By Mistake

Chapter Twelve: Caught

Elena's POV

Ten minutes felt like ten seconds.

I stood up off the bench before I'd even decided to, phone still in my hand, Julian's text glowing up at me like a countdown.

My mind ran through every version of an explanation I could give him. None of them were true. All of them were easier than the truth, which was rapidly becoming the story of my entire life.

"You should go," I told Jax.

"I'm not gonna run."

"I'm not asking you to run. I'm asking you to let me handle this the right way, and that doesn't happen with both of you standing in the same park."

He looked at me for a second like he wanted to argue. Then he nodded, jaw tight, and started walking toward the far gate.

I watched him go and felt something twist in my chest that had no business being there. Like I was the one abandoning him, not the other way around.

He didn't make it.

Julian came through the near entrance first, moving fast for a man in dress shoes, and I watched his eyes find Jax across the open grass before they found me.

"Julian—"

"Who is that." Flat. Not really a question.

"A friend. It's not what it looks like."

"It looks like my fiancée is meeting a strange man in a park on a Tuesday afternoon without telling me." His voice stayed level, which somehow made it worse. "Priya mentioned it like it was nothing. Said you had a park meeting on your calendar and she assumed I already knew."

I filed that away. Priya hadn't set this up. She'd just answered a question without knowing what she was answering.

I'd have to tell her that too, eventually. Add it to the growing pile of things I owed people explanations for.

"His name is Jax," I said. "I know him from the gala. We've been getting coffee, talking. It's nothing romantic."

That last part came out fast, automatic, and I heard how hollow it sounded the second it left my mouth.

Julian's gaze slid past me, tracking Jax as he crossed the grass toward the gate, not quite fast enough to avoid being seen.

"He looks familiar," Julian said slowly. "Have I met him?"

"I don't think so."

"He walks like he's trying not to be looked at." Julian's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "That's a specific kind of walk, Elena. People only walk like that when they're used to being looked at and hate it."

My stomach dropped. He was closer to the truth than he knew, and he didn't even realize what he was circling.

It occurred to me, absurdly, that Julian noticed things too. Just never the things that mattered. He'd clock a stranger's posture across a park before he'd notice the exhaustion on my own face.

"You're reading too much into this."

"Am I?" He turned back to me, and the calm in his voice had gone thinner, stretched tight over something I didn't like the shape of. "You disappeared for hours the morning of our engagement party. You've been distracted for a week. And now I find you in a park with a man who walks like he's got something to hide."

"I told you, it's nothing."

"Then tell me the truth about the morning of the party. Where you actually were."

"Julian, can we not do this here."

"We're doing this here because you've made sure we never do it anywhere else." For the first time his voice sharpened, just slightly, the calm cracking at the edges. "I've asked you three times this week if everything's okay. Three times you told me it was fine. I'm standing in a park watching you flinch every time I say a word, Elena. Something is not fine."

The question landed exactly where I'd been dreading it would land for six days straight. I felt the lie rise up automatic and practiced, ready to slide out the way it had with Carla, with Priya, with my own mother.

I looked at Julian's face. Calm. Reasonable. Already halfway to believing whatever explanation I gave him, because that's how this always worked between us. I explained, he accepted, and something small got buried a little deeper every time.

I thought about the joint account I hadn't asked for. The contract with my signature I didn't remember signing. Six days of lying to everyone I loved to protect an image that was starting to feel less like mine and more like something he'd built for me.

I was so tired of burying things.

"I got married," I said.

The word came out before I could stop it, flat and enormous in the open air between us.

Julian went very still.

"What did you just say?"