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“Is there anything else that you need from me?” I asked, unsure of how to leave things.
Annie shook her head. I could tell that she was not happy, but I knew that she wouldn’t say anything to me.
“I’ll see you Friday,” I said, awkwardly.
Annie nodded, but she said nothing to me. She just grabbed the door and walked me out of the room. Julia’s dark eyes were watching us as we said our goodbyes, and I left their small apartment.
As the door slammed in my face, I became worried.
Annie was clearly pissed, but there was nothing that I could do about it. If she didn’t want to speak up for herself, then I wasn’t going to bend over backwards to ensure that she was happy. At least, that was what I reminded myself. I’d developed the contract with Annie in mind. No matter what came out of this situation, she was going to be taken care of, but in order to do that, she needed to be willing to play ball.
Sighing, I made my way out of the building, praying that somehow this would all work out. My entire candidacy was riding on Annie and I being able to make this work.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
“I’m sorry,” Julia said. “What?”
I sighed. I’d debated whether or not to tell Julia about the arrangement that Ezra and I had made. When he showed up at the apartment, I knew that Julia wasn’t going to just let things go. I’d told her when I’d been fired because I needed to explain why I was home so often.
“It’s not that serious,” I said, trying to downplay things. It was that serious, or at least, it had the capacity to be very serious. After all, if Ezra was made mayor, we would have to get married. If not, we still might have to get married.
“This is serious!” Julia exclaimed. “It’s basically…” she trailed off as I leveled her with a stern look. I knew exactly what she was going to say, and I didn’t want to hear it.
“We don’t have many other options,” I reminded her. “The money he gave me is what I used to pay the rent for the next few months.”
“You didn’t need to do that. We could have figured something out.”
We both knew that there wasn’t anything to be figured out. Julia had torn her ACL, and she would need surgery. There was no guarantee that she would ever be able to dance again. She was heartbroken when the doctor had given her the news and being able to cover the rent for the next few months had been the least I could do.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not just doing this for the money. Ezra wants to make real change in the city, and I think he could.” I didn’t want to get too much more into it than that. Julia knew that I had been in an abusive relationship, but she didn’t know the full truth about the Bratva.
Julia’s brown eyes looked me up and down, and I knew that she was looking for an Achilles heel. “You didn’t seem too happy when he left here,” she reminded me.
I sighed. I hadn’t been too happy with Ezra when he left. He’d come into my home, my space, without checking with me first, and I hadn’t liked it. I’d not wanted Julia involved in all of this. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that Ezra would want to come to my home. I’d thought that I could keep everything separate.
“I was pissed off at him,” I said. “I hadn’t expected him to show up here.”
Julia’s mouth dropped open, and she laughed slightly. “What?” she asked.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because you are angry that he had the audacity to show up here, but you’ve signed a contract basically promising to marry him. Did you think you were going to be able to treat this like a job?” There was sarcasm in Julia’s voice which raised my hackles.
“Kind of,” I said, feeling less sure of myself.
Julia snorted and shook her head at me. “This is why I’m worried. Not because I think Ezra is taking advantage of you, because I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t agree to do something you didn’t want to do.”
I was surprised by this. I thought that Julia would believe that Ezra had trapped me in this decision, which he hadn’t. He offered me something that I couldn’t say no to, and maybe that made me a terrible person. “Then, what are you worried about?”
“I’m worried because you don’t seem to have any sense of the reality of what you are agreeing to. You aren’t just going to be able keep your real life separate from Ezra’s, especially if you are trying to convince all of New York that you two are loved up.”
I didn’t know what to say to any of that because in some ways Julia was right. I thought that I would be able to have my cake and eat it too, but I was beginning to realize that wasn’t going to happen. Ezra had come to my house without a second thought. Why wouldn’t he? After all, we were potentially engaged.
“Why did he come here anyway?” Julia asked. “I thought you two went through terms and agreements yesterday.” I knew that Julia was being sarcastic. She didn’t think that I should be agreeing to this, but I didn’t care. I had my reasons, whether she understood them or not.
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the credit card that Ezra had given to me. “He came by to drop this off,” I said, throwing the card towards her.
She picked it up with a wide-eyed look on her face. It was clear that she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. “Does this have your name on it?” she asked.
