Married By Mistake

Chapter Four: Second Attempt

Elena's POV

I turned my phone face down on my thigh so fast I nearly knocked over my water glass.

"Everything okay?" Julian asked.

"Work thing. Client emergency." The lies were coming faster now, stacking up like plates I wasn't sure I could keep balanced. "I should go handle it before it turns into something bigger."

"You just got here."

"I know. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you." I was already standing, already reaching for my coat. Something in my chest twisted at how easy it was becoming to walk away from him mid-sentence.

"We'll talk tonight. About what I wanted to say."

His jaw did something small and controlled, there and gone. "I'll hold you to that."

I called Jax before I'd even made it half a block.

"Wrong county," I said. "Explain."

"So apparently there's a filing system, and our license got processed in the county we got married in, which isn't where either of us lives, which means the annulment paperwork has to go through a different office. Closed until Thursday."

"Thursday."

"Thursday."

I closed my eyes on the sidewalk and breathed through it, the way I breathe through a canceled venue or a missing cake three hours before a wedding.

"We go to the right courthouse today," I said. "Right now. Ask them to expedite it. People do that. It's possible."

"You want to go today?"

"I have a florist consult at two, and then yes, right now."

"You have a florist consult," he repeated, like the words didn't quite fit in his mouth. "For your wedding. To someone else. While we're trying to un-marry ourselves."

"Welcome to my week."

He met me outside the correct courthouse forty minutes later. The building was open this time, fluorescent-lit, smelling faintly of burnt coffee.

We stood in a line that moved with the speed of continental drift. Filled out three separate forms. Finally sat across from a clerk named Denise, who looked at our paperwork with the weary patience of someone who'd seen every possible way a marriage could go wrong.

"Emergency annulment requests need a judge's signature," Denise said. "Judge is out until Thursday."

"There has to be someone else," I said. "Someone on call. Someone who does emergencies."

"Ma'am, this isn't a hospital."

"I'm aware it isn't a hospital."

"You could file for expedited review. Extra fee. Still takes ten business days minimum." She slid a form across the desk without looking up. "Or you wait for Judge Alvarado Thursday and hope he's in a signing mood."

I stared at the form like it had personally wronged me.

Ten business days. I ran the calendar in my head automatically, the way I run every calendar. Engagement party tonight. Dress fittings next week. My mother circling closer with every passing day.

Ten days felt like a decade.

Beside me, Jax leaned back, arms folded, watching me with an expression I couldn't read.

"You're doing the thing," he said quietly, once Denise had moved to the next window.

"What thing."

"Your whole face turns into a spreadsheet. You're recalculating."

"I'm problem-solving."

"Sure. Looked like recalculating."

I ignored that, because he wasn't entirely wrong. I filled out the expedited review form with sharp, efficient strokes. At least it was something with an actual next step.

Jax signed where I pointed. His handwriting quick and slanted, the same as on the marriage certificate. I watched his hand move across the page and thought, absurdly, that it looked like he was writing music instead of his own name.

"What," he said, catching me looking.

"Nothing."

That was becoming a pattern too. Him asking what. Me saying nothing. Both of us circling around something neither of us had named yet.

I filed that away with the rest.

We turned the form in. Ten business days, best case. Walked out into an afternoon that had finally decided to rain.

"I need coffee," Jax said. "Real coffee, not courthouse dishwater. Two blocks from here."

"I have a florist consult in—" I checked my phone. "Twelve minutes."

"Reschedule it."

"I don't reschedule vendor meetings."

"You married a stranger last night. Feels like today's the day for exceptions."

I almost laughed. Almost. Not fast enough, and the look on his face when he caught it, pleased and a little startled, made me want to look away.

We ended up at the coffee place anyway. Ten minutes I told myself I could spare.

Standing at the counter, arguing lightly about whether oat milk counted as real coffee, laughing at something I'd later be unable to fully explain to anyone.

It occurred to me, somewhere in the middle of that laugh, that I hadn't checked my phone in almost ten minutes. That had never once happened with Julian, not in a year and a half.

I didn't get long to sit with that thought. That's when I heard a voice behind me say my name like it had just found something very interesting to report to the office.

"Elena?"

I turned. Carla Ibsen, senior planner at the firm, umbrella still dripping in her hand, staring at Jax and me standing shoulder to shoulder with the exact expression of someone doing math.

"Oh," Carla said. "I didn't know you were seeing someone new."