Page 661 of End Game

The day Griffin married her because insurance in this country is an elaborate extortion scheme and Cami needed better access to healthcare.

She spent most of the morning calling it their benefits package anniversary until Griffin finally picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her upstairs while she laughed loudly enough for the rest of us to hear through two closed doors.

Later, we all went out to dinner. There was cake. Dex made a toast that began with to fraudulent romance until Griffin informed him there was nothing fraudulent about a legally binding marriage license. Cami corrected him that the romance part had initially been questionable, and Griffin kissed her in front of all of us until she stopped talking.

It had been funny.

It had also stayed with me.

Not because I wanted what Griffin and Cami had. Their marriage belongs to them, including the weird way it started and everything it became afterward.

What stayed with me was the distinction they kept making without really trying.

The paperwork had happened first. The choosing came later, over and over again.

For a few weeks afterward, I caught myself thinking about Dex whenever marriage came up. Not wedding venues or tax filing or whose insurance was better. Just him.

Eventually I realized the thought wasn't going away.

I wanted the choice first.

No emergency. No practical problem to solve. No reason at all beyond the fact that when I picture my future, Dex is already standing somewhere inside it, usually talking too loudly and wearing shoes he abandoned in the middle of a walkway.

That's more or less what I told him when we finally put the word primary on whatever we'd already become. Giving it a name hadn't created anything between us.

Apparently I want another name anyway.

Fiancé.

Husband.

Even thinking the second one still changes something low in my chest.

My fingers slide into my pocket and brush the edge of the ring box.

Ronan notices. “You have checked that six times.”

“Five.”

“Seven.”

I glare at him.

“I'm trying to help.”

“No, you're not.”

He considers that and shrugs.

Ronan is the only person I told.

There were several reasons for that.

He doesn't accidentally reveal secrets because he's excited. He doesn't make other people's events about his own feelings. More importantly, when I told him, he didn't immediately ask whether I'd thought it through like I was about to make an impulsive decision.

Instead, he asked whether I specifically wanted a legal marriage. He asked whether Dex had ever indicated marriage was something he wanted. Then he asked how I thought another marriage might affect the family structure we'd already spent the last year building.

Useful questions.