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Slowly pushing open the door, I stepped aside and waved him in. “This is you. I’m sorry about the mess. I can have it completely cleaned out and rearranged by the end of the day. I just, uh, I haven’t quite had time yet.”

Holden stepped past me into the room, his eyes scanning the oak paneling, the stacks of old magazines, and the sad little futon. “I assumed you worked.”

I bit back a sharp retort, a spike of irritation flaring through my panic. “I do work, but I figured getting married was a good enough excuse to take a few days off. Unlike you, who’s still going to class.”

Holden swung his backpack off his shoulder, dropped it on the futon, unzipped it, and started rifling through his things without another word to me. My eyes narrowed as I wondered if this guy had agreed to marry me simply because he’d thought he would get away with treating me like I didn’t exist, but I also wasn’t about to beg him not to go to class just so we could actually have a simple conversation.

“Alright,” I said finally. “The WiFi password is on the fridge downstairs.”

“Cool.” He didn’t look up from his bag, still furiously searching for something, but every time he withdrew his hand even slightly, I saw that flash of gold on his finger and my heart tripped over itself.

Being in such close proximity to him was so incredibly tense and awkward that if he wasn’t going to talk to me anyway, there was no way I was staying. I hurried back downstairs without even trying to say anything else myself. My feet had barely even hit the hardwood of the foyer when Tasha was there, practically vibrating with a mix of shock and rage, her eyes just about bulging out of her head. As she looked at me, it seemed she was about to completely explode.

“You married Holden Thayer?” she whispered in a quiet, but lethal hiss. “Alicia, he⁠—”

Before she could even finish, my phone let out a loud ping in my hand. Usually, I heard that specific chime only on the day my salary was deposited, which was not today. I almost jumped out of my skin, but when my eyes dropped to my screen and I saw the automated alert from my banking app, I nearly burst into tears.

Sheer, overwhelming relief spiraled through me like a tornado, my chest heaving as a ragged sob threatened to tear its way out. Naturally, at the exact same moment, I heard the heavy thud of footsteps on the stairs, Holden coming back down.

He rounded the corner into the living room with a car key clutched in his hand, but he stopped dead in his tracks the second he saw me. We caught each other’s gaze for a fleeting second, but he took in my trembling shoulders and probably the tears clinging to my eyelashes too. For a fraction of a heartbeat, his cold mask of indifference disappeared and his features twisted with genuine concern, his eyebrows knitting together as he took half a step toward me. “Alicia? Are you⁠—”

“I’m fine,” I choked out, a sob bleeding into the words. “Just, uh, excuse me.”

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t fall apart in front of him. There was no way he would understand and he’d probably leave here thinking he’d married a total psychopath. So I turned on my heels and raced down the hallway toward the safety of the bathroom before either of them could stop me.

There would be time to figure everything else out later. If the study wasn’t good enough for him, I would make a plan. If he expected food on the table at seven every night or sex every other Saturday, well, I’d work that out eventually too.

But right now? This was the only thing that mattered. Despite what it had cost me, I’d done it. I’d saved my parents’ house and I just needed a fucking minute to myself to absorb the implications of that.

CHAPTER 13

HOLDEN

Ineeded to blow off some steam before my afternoon lecture, so I ended up at the gym with Wyatt. After dropping a few hasty changes of clothes off at Alicia’s house, my head was completely messed up. If I didn’t snap out of it soon, I might as well have done what she had and taken a few days off, because fuck.

So far, being married was not doing good things for my productivity. All morning, I’d drifted from one class to the next, barely hearing a word of any of my lectures. The image of her standing in that living room kept flashing behind my eyelids on a constant, distracting loop. I couldn’t get it out of my damn head.

She had cried.

When I’d gone back downstairs to leave for class after dropping off my bag, I had not expected to see her looking like she was about to start bawling her eyes out. Nor had I expected the sudden, severely uncomfortable twist I’d felt in my chest at the sight, but it turned out I genuinely hadn’t liked seeing her upset.

Unfortunately, since Wyatt was the baby of our family, he had “fishing out the emotions of his older siblings” down to a literal science at this point. As much as I hadn’t intended on talking to him at all while we worked out, somehow, I found myself grunting a few sentences anyway. I didn’t give him much, but it felt like I owed him at least a basic explanation. Or maybe it was more of a warning.

“It’s not really a marriage,” I started when he just went about his set on the bench press, waiting for me to start the conversation instead of pushing. “It feels more like a legally binding roommate agreement, and it doesn’t mean I like her. That’s not what this is.”

Knowing exactly how to handle me, Wyatt re-racked the bar and sat up, but he still didn’t come right out with the big questions. “Okay, cool. So you married a literal stranger, like, yesterday, but do you think I could at least have your new address?”

“It’s in Hyde Park,” I said. “An old brownstone she’s renting with a friend. Shit, I suppose I should find out how much they pay so I can contribute my share.”

Now that he was post-college and officially working for Thayer Steelworks, I knew Wyatt had been looking around for places to rent too, and his eyes widened a little. “Hyde Park, huh? That’s nice. She must be doing pretty fucking well if she can afford a place there with just one roommate.”

As I loaded another plate onto the squat rack, I realized he probably wasn’t wrong. “How much do librarians earn? Actually, I don’t even know if that’s what she does for work. I just know she works at the library, but she could be the custodian there for all I know.”

Wyatt laughed and wiped his forehead with a towel, looking at me with an amused grin spreading across his lips. “That’s it? That’s your debrief? Come on, Holden. Give me the obvious answers here. How does it actually feel? Do you like her, even just a little bit? I don’t give a shit if she’s a librarian, a custodian, or the coffee lady. Just talk to me.”

“I told you how it feels,” I growled, stepping up to the rack. “It feels like I’ve moved into a new dorm or into an apartment with new roommates. Because that’s all I’ve done.”

“Well, no, not really,” he reasoned, apparently feeling like it was time to come at me directly now. “You also signed a piece of paper that allows her to change her last name and organize your funeral someday.”