Just legality and ink and inevitability.
When she signed the marriage license, it hit me with a clarity so sharp it almost hurt:
She is my wife.
And I have no idea how to deserve that.
I pulled the ring box from my pocket, something I’d planned weeks ago, something that felt absurdly small for what it represented, and that was when I saw her notice my hand.
The band I’d put on that morning.
Her eyes dropped to it, then lifted back to my face.
Surprise.
I took her hand, warm, steady now, and slid the band on her finger.
The engagement ring followed.
We were close enough then that I could feel her breath, could see the faint pulse at her throat, could count the freckles across her nose.
For a moment, a thrilling, reckless moment, I thought she expected me to kiss her.
I wanted to.
The urge came out of nowhere and everywhere all at once, visceral and urgent and entirely unwelcome.
I leaned in.
Then stopped.
Because if I kissed her, I wouldn’t be able to pretend this was just an arrangement anymore.
I stepped back, cleared my throat and said I had a meeting. Watched something shutter behind her eyes. And hated myself for it.
After Claire escorted Lucy out, I told everyone to leave.
No one moved.
Theo was the first to break the silence.
“What the hell was that?”
His voice wasn’t amused. It wasn’t playful. It was furious.
“You married her like you were closing a hostile acquisition,” he continued. “You didn’t even give her a second to breathe.”
“It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement,” I said automatically.
Theo laughed... once. Sharp. Disbelieving.
“You keep saying that like it explains why she looked like she was about to bolt.”
Caleb didn’t look at me. He stared at the table.
“You almost lost her today,” he said quietly.
That snapped something in me.
