“I’ll manage,” I said.
Her brows pulled together. Not mocking, not challenging, just curious. Like she was trying to figure out what, exactly, “manage” meant.
If she knew the truth, that being around her too much made my pulse kick for reasons I didn’t want to examine, she’d weaponize it instantly.
I cleared my throat. “Anything else we need to think about?”
“Only a million things,” she muttered. Then, more quietly: “But we’ll figure it out.”
Silence stretched between us. It wasn’t tense or hostile. Just loaded.
I exhaled slowly. “Okay.”
She blinked. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeated, my voice barely above a breath. “Let’s do it.”
Roxie didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But her inhale was sharp. Almost startled. Like she couldn’t believe I’d actually said it.
Truth was, neither could I.
But the decision, once spoken, settled into my bones with strange finality. Not quite relief and not panic, but something else. Something heavier. Something solid.
The train was already moving.
And there was no getting off now.
CHAPTER 8
ROXIE
I’d always imagined that if I ever got married, I’d at least have time to shave my legs.
Not that this was a real wedding. Not that it counted in the swoony, fairy-light, champagne-toast way. Not that Ledger Hayes and I were … anything. We were a team, that was all. A duo with matching panic spirals and a knack for landing ourselves in catastrophes that made sense only if you squinted really hard.
But even knowing all that, standing inside the county courthouse on a Wednesday morning with fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, I still felt like I’d wandered onto the wrong movie set.
Ledger shifted beside me, hands shoved into the pockets of his nicest pair of jeans. He’d put on a clean black button-up, his hair was still damp from the shower, and his expression was the exact one he wore right before diving off the block. Focused. Possiblyquestioning every life choice that had delivered him to this moment.
We’d waited until practically the last possible day before his sponsorship deadline. Ledger had informed the university two days ago that he was getting married and filed the paperwork for married-athlete housing. The woman in the athletic department had congratulated him with a suspiciously cheerful smile, like she’d never once imagined him dating someone, let alone putting a ring on it.
And here we were, in a beige hallway, one of the overhead lights flickering at the end. About to become legally entangled for … survival.
The courthouse smelled like disinfectant, old paper, and bad decisions.
Which felt appropriate, considering I was currently standing beside Ledger Hayes, both of us wearing the strained expressions of two people seconds away from jumping out of a moving car.
“This is surreal,” I whispered.
“Mm,” he grunted back, which was Ledger-speak forI agree, but I will physically combust before admitting it out loud.
A bored county clerk stamped papers behind a foggy plexiglass window. A couple holding hands—real newlyweds, probably—walked past us glowing like a Pinterest board. Meanwhile, Ledger and I stood six feet apart, stiff as mannequins, like even proximity felt too intimate.
My palms were sweating.
His jaw was clenched so hard, I could see the muscle jumping.
Great start to a marriage.
