Married By Mistake

Chapter Seven: A Favor

Jax's POV

Not a big deal is the kind of sentence people only send when it's, in fact, a very big deal. I know that better than anyone, and I sent it anyway.

Elena didn't push. I noticed that. Filed it away without meaning to, the way I'd started filing away things about her without deciding to.

My phone rang two hours later. Her name on the screen, no warning.

"I need a favor," she said, the second I picked up.

"Wow, no hello, straight to the favor. I respect the efficiency."

"I'm serious. I have a wedding in nine days with no music, and I need someone who can play."

There was a pause on my end long enough that I wondered if the call had dropped.

"I don't play," I said finally. Careful in a way that confirmed more than it denied.

"A guy on the street called you Jackson today and said something about Vienna. You froze so hard I could hear it through a text message."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"That's not the same thing as agreeing to play a wedding."

"I'm not asking you to perform a concerto. I'm asking you to help me not lose a client who'll destroy my professional reputation over a canceled string quartet."

I could hear how much it cost her to ask. That's the thing about Elena I hadn't expected. Underneath all the spreadsheets, she hates needing anyone.

I get that. I built an entire life around not needing anyone either, just in a messier font than hers.

"I haven't touched a piano in six years," I said.

"I'm not asking you to explain why. I'm asking if you can."

"That's not really how it works, Elena."

"Then just come look at the venue. That's it. You don't have to commit to anything."

I exhaled long and slow, the sound of a man talking himself into something against his better judgment.

"Fine," I said. "I'll come look. That's all I'm promising."

I showed up two hours later, hands shoved in my pockets, walking through the empty ballroom like the space itself made me uneasy.

Because it did.

Elena watched me take in the room. Tall windows. Space cleared where the quartet would've set up. I felt my shoulders go tight and careful in a way I recognized for what it probably was.

"There's a piano in the corner room," she said. "For cocktail hour. You don't have to touch it. I just need names, if you have any, people who could learn this fast."

I didn't answer right away. I walked toward the corner room instead, half expecting myself to bolt the second I saw the instrument sitting there under its dust cover.

I didn't bolt.

I stood in front of it for a long moment, hands still in my pockets, working out the distance between me and it.

Six years, and it still looked exactly the way every piano has always looked to me. Like a question I don't have an answer for anymore.

"It's a decent one," I said, almost to myself. "Better than it has any right to be for a hotel ballroom."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Neither. It's just true." I glanced at her, and something like a real smile broke through, small and surprised, like it caught me off guard as much as her. "You really don't know anything about pianos, do you."

"I know they have keys. I know they're expensive to move."

"That's the whole extent of it?"

"I plan the flowers, Jax. Someone else handles the flowers being a metaphor for anything deeper."

I laughed at that. A real laugh, not the deflecting kind. The sound of it in the empty room did something strange to the space between us. Loosened it.

For one unguarded second it felt less like two strangers managing a mess, and more like something else I didn't have a name for yet.

I was still trying to figure out what to call it when my phone buzzed in my pocket. My whole face must have changed the second I saw the screen, because Elena's expression shifted too, watching me.

Marcus. Three texts in a row, each one worse than the last. My brother doesn't panic easily. When he does, it's never small.

"I have to go," I said, already backing toward the door.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. It's fine."

I heard myself say it and knew exactly how it sounded. Same flat, careful lie from that morning's text.

I didn't stay to see if she believed it. The door swung shut behind me before she could get another word out.

I stood in the hallway for a second, phone in my hand, chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with the piano and everything to do with the fact that for one whole minute in that corner room, I'd actually forgotten to be afraid of it.

I hadn't forgotten anything in six years. Not once. And it took her, of all people, standing there asking dumb questions about flowers, to knock the fear loose for sixty seconds.

I didn't know what to do with that. So I did what I always do.

I ran.