Married By Mistake

Chapter Nine: Third Attempt

Jax's POV

She called instead of texting back. I picked up on the first ring, voice low, trying not to be overheard.

"Give me a second," I said. She heard a door, muffled voices, Marcus saying something sharp enough that she'd have caught the tone even without the words.

Then a second door. Quieter. My voice came back closer, tired.

"Sorry. He's gone. For now."

"What happened?"

"Nothing. He worries. It's a whole thing." The deflection came fast, practiced. I heard the strain underneath it myself this time, and I don't think I hid it as well as usual. "How was your night?"

"I found a contract with my signature on it that I don't remember signing."

"That's not nothing either."

"No," she agreed. Neither of us said anything else useful. We hung up with a truce neither of us had actually reached. Both carrying something we weren't ready to hand over.

I lay awake a long time after that call, staring at my ceiling, running the same math I've run for six years. How much of the truth is safe to give someone before it stops being mine to control.

I never land on an answer. I just wait until I'm too tired to keep running it.

I didn't sleep well. By Thursday, the day the judge was supposedly in a signing mood, I was running on caffeine and a headache that had set up permanent residence behind my left eye.

I met her outside the courthouse. She looked like she hadn't slept either.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Back at you."

We went in together. Filed into the same fluorescent waiting room. This time we actually got called, actually stood in front of an actual judge, which felt for one brief moment like we might walk out of this building with the whole mess behind us.

The judge frowned at the paperwork for a long time before he spoke.

"There's a discrepancy," he said. "Name on the marriage license reads Jackson A. Romero. ID submitted for the annulment filing reads Jax Romero, no middle initial. These need to match before I can sign off on anything."

"They're the same person," Elena said. "Obviously they're the same person, he's standing right here."

"Court doesn't work off obvious, ma'am."

I hadn't said a word. I felt her glance at me, felt my own jaw go tight, my eyes fixed somewhere past the judge's shoulder. My whole body had gone very still, and it had nothing to do with courtroom boredom.

"There a problem with that, Mr. Romero?" the judge asked.

"No, your honor." My voice came out flat. Careful. The same voice from the crosswalk.

I could feel Elena watching me the whole walk out of that courtroom. Not saying anything yet. Just watching, the way she watches a seating chart when a table's about to go wrong.

We walked out into a bright, indifferent afternoon. I could feel her patience running out beside me, and honestly, mine wasn't holding either.

"What is going on with your name," she said. "There's a discrepancy. There's always a discrepancy with you. You freeze at a guy on the street, go pale over a text message, won't touch the piano but clearly know exactly what you're looking at, and now there's a legal name issue nobody bothered to mention."

"It's not a big deal."

"You keep saying that, and every single time it turns out to be a bigger deal than the last one."

"Elena—"

"I have given you the benefit of the doubt for four days. I have covered for you. Rescheduled my own life around yours. I am so tired, Jax. I am so tired of managing something I don't understand."

Something in me snapped loose that I'd kept locked down for six years.

"You think I'm not tired?" My voice came out sharp, louder than I meant it. "You get to go back to your perfect fiancé and your perfect five year plan and pretend this was a bad night. I don't get to pretend. I built a whole life specifically so I'd never have to explain any of this to anyone, and then I married a stranger in one night of tequila and now I can't even file paperwork without the whole thing threatening to come apart."

"Then tell me what it is. Whatever it is. I can't help you manage something I don't have the first fact about."

I stopped walking. Stopped talking.

For one second I actually considered it. Actually let myself imagine what it would feel like to say it out loud to someone who wasn't Marcus, who hadn't been there for any of it, who'd have no way to picture exactly how bad it got.

"I used to play piano," I said. Quiet now. All the anger drained out of it. "Not like a hobby. Not recitals. I was supposed to be one of the best in the world. And then I wasn't anything at all, in front of everyone, on the biggest stage they give you. I've spent six years making sure nobody ever calls me Jackson again."

The words hung there between us. Small and enormous at once.

I heard myself say it and felt the floor tilt under me the same way it had at the crosswalk. Except this time there was no dog to hide behind, no leash to pull, nothing to do with my hands.

I'd just handed her the one thing I swore I'd never say out loud to anyone new again, and I had absolutely no idea how to take it back.

"I have to go," I said.

"Jax, wait—"

I was already walking. Fast. Not looking back. Every step away from her felt like the only thing keeping me upright.