Married To My High School Bully

Chapter 3

For several seconds, Damien simply stared at me as though he couldn’t decide whether I was serious.

Then he took a step closer. I immediately moved backward.

He stopped and raised an eyebrow.

There wasn’t much farther for me to go without ending up in a flower bed, and judging by the way his lips twitched, he seemed to realize that too. Instead of coming closer, he lowered himself onto the grass a short distance away from me, leaving enough space between us to make it clear he wasn’t trying to crowd me.

“I must say, this reaction is unusual,” he admitted. “Most women would probably be thrilled to find themselves in your position.”

“I am not most women.”

“I can see that.” He leaned back on his hands, studying me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “Most women would have spent the entire dinner trying to impress me, and you spent most of it trying to insult me without actually saying anything directly.”

“I wasn’t trying to impress you.”

“Clearly.”

“And I don’t care if you’re rich.”

“I gathered that too.”

“I don’t care that you’re handsome either.”

A slow smile appeared on his face and I immediately regretted speaking.

“But you noticed,” he said.

“Don’t get excited. I’m capable of having eyes.”

He chuckled. “You’re giving me whiplash. One minute you’re telling me I’m handsome, and the next you’re practically threatening to throw me into a bush.”

“I never said you were handsome.” I said as I rolled my eyes and looked away.

He was enjoying this far too much.

For a few seconds, neither of us spoke. After a moment, he broke the silence.

“I’m not exactly thrilled about this arrangement either,” he admitted. “Marriage wasn’t part of my plans. I have a company to run, a reputation to build, and a father whose shadow seems determined to follow me everywhere I go. If I’m going to take control of my own life and make a name for myself, I have to make sacrifices too.”

I turned toward him. “As always, everything has to be about you and what you want.” My voice rose as I glared at him. “Well, it’s not my problem. It’s yours, and I don’t give a damn about whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

He studied me for a moment before folding his arms across his chest. “You speak like you know me, but you don’t. Let me jog your memory. Your family is about to lose everything, Avery. The only thing that can save your family now is the Kingsley name. Not even another loan will be enough to pull your father out of this mess, because people trust the Kingsley brand.”

He raised an eyebrow, and a faint smile appeared on his lips. “So, really, you have two choices. You can watch your family lose everything, or you can marry a man you barely know who, if I’m remembering correctly, apparently smells pretty damn good?”

I stared at him, my anger slowly giving way to the horrible truth. He was right. I was trapped, and we both knew it.

“You don’t even recognize me, do you?” I asked quietly.

His brows furrowed in confusion. “Should I?”

The question hit harder than I expected. I quickly looked away, blinking back the tears burning my eyes because I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I couldn’t even blame him for not recognizing me. We hadn’t seen each other in years, and I wasn’t the same girl he had known back in school.

Back then, I had been the quiet, awkward girl who was always buried in her books. My hair was almost permanently tied into a simple ponytail, I wore oversized glasses that covered half my face, and makeup was practically nonexistent in my world. I had dressed plainly, never bothered with my appearance, and there had been more than a few times when people mistook me for someone’s assistant or even a maid because of how I looked.

But that girl was long gone.

Over the years, my face had changed, becoming softer and more defined, while my features had matured. I had learned how to style my hair, dress properly, and use makeup to bring out what was already there. Most importantly, I had stopped hiding behind those glasses. I wasn’t trying to flatter myself, but I knew I was beautiful now, and judging by the number of men who looked twice whenever I walked into a room, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

So, yes, perhaps I couldn’t blame him.

I took a slow breath and forced the ache in my chest back down. “Why me, then? You’re rich, you’re handsome, and I’m sure you have hundreds of women willing to marry you. Why choose me?”

He gave me an amused look. “I’m going to ignore the compliment you tried to sneak into that question and answer you anyway. My mother doesn’t trust me. She thinks I’ll bring home some woman I met at a club an hour earlier and announce that I’m getting married.” He shrugged lightly. “And, honestly, she might have a point.”

I scoffed. “So you’re a mommy’s boy? The kind who does whatever his mother says?”

“Girl, you’re giving me whiplash.” He shook his head with a small laugh. “One minute, you compliment me, then you turn around and insult me before I’ve even had time to enjoy it. I don’t even know which version of you I’m supposed to deal with.”

He sighed, and the amusement disappeared from his face. “I just don’t have the energy to argue with my mother about this. We have a complicated relationship.” He hesitated, clearly uncomfortable, before looking back at me. “Look, let’s stop wasting time. Neither of us wants this marriage, so why don’t we treat it like a business arrangement?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We make an arrangement.” He met my gaze directly. “A simple one. We get married, stay together for a year, and give both families what they want. After that, we walk away and go our separate ways.”

I stared at him in stunned disbelief, my mouth falling open as I tried to process what I had just heard. Of all the ridiculous things I had expected from him, this was definitely not one of them.