I cleared my throat. “You said you could help. I don’t want help. I don’t want a bailout. But I …” The words tangled together. I tried again. “I can’t lose access to the pool, Roxie. I can’t. Not like this.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“I’m not saying yes,” I added, because pride wasn’t dead yet. “But I need answers. If—if—we were to consider this thing, this arrangement?—”
“Marriage,” she said, deadpan.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“How else am I supposed to say it?”
I grimaced. “Quietly?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ledger, what do you want to know?”
Everything. Nothing. All of it.
“Rules,” I said instead. “We need rules.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Rules.”
“Yes. Ground rules. Boundaries. If we seriously consider this—which we probably shouldn’t—we need it written out. Like a business deal.”
She blinked at me. “You want a contract.”
I shrugged. “You’re the one with the trust fund paperwork. Seems on-brand.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then pointed toward the kitchen table. “Sit. If we’re doing this, I need caffeine.”
I sat reluctantly, my body humming with restless energy. She moved around the kitchen, brewing a cup ofcoffee, grabbing her laptop, pulling out a pad of paper. It hit me then—hard—that we were actually doing this. Talking logistics. Talkingmarriagelike it was an item on a to-do list.
She slid into the chair across from me. “Okay. Rule one?”
I stared at her. At the curve of her jaw. The small wrinkle between her eyebrows she always got when she was concentrating. The hint of freckles she probably thought no one noticed.
The last person in the world I should marry.
Even so?—
“No feelings,” I said.
Her brows lifted. “Obviously.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Like—none,” I clarified. “No … I don’t know. No getting weird. No falling in … anything.”
Her lips twitched again. “I promise not to spontaneously fall in love with you, Ledger.”
I ignored the way my pulse jumped. “Good.”
“Rule two.” She jotted something down. “No touching?”
I swallowed. “Minimal touching.”
“Define minimal.”
