Page 9 of Where Happiness Begins

Once I’ve tested the doors to make sure they’re truly locked, I bring the trash bags to the dumpster, and when I turn toward my car, I jump out of my skin, noticing someone there. I clutch my chest, blood thumping in my ears as I take in the man there.

Carter.

He’s leaning against the hood of a vintage Mustang, his arms crossed over his chest, one ankle thrown over the other. Even only illuminated by the single lamppost of the parking lot, he looks like a sinful dream.

I open my mouth to complain about how much he scared me and ask what he’s doing here when he says, “Ihave insurance.”

My lips part.

“If that’s what it takes, then I’ll do it.” He blinks, the only movement in his perfectly still body. “I’ll marry you.”

Chapter 4

“This is insane.”

“You’re the one who suggested it.”

“But I wasn’t serious.” At least I think I wasn’t.

I let my forehead drop onto the greasy melamine table. I’m too tired for this. After spitting my drink in his face and proposing a sham of a marriage, it’s too late for me to be acting proper in front of Carter.

When he dropped his bomb in the bar’s parking lot, I think he realized I was too shocked to be able to hold a conversation right then and there, so he suggested we drive to a nearby twenty-four-hour diner to “hammer out the details.”

As if the details are the important part here.

I can’t believe I’m even considering this. It’s insane. Dangerous. So freaking stupid. And yet, I still followed him here.

“There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea.” I lift my head and rub my eyes with my palms. Around us, the fifties-themed diner is empty, save for the two of us and Maggie, our waitress, who looks to be in her seventies and who’s set up behind the counter to read a magazine after she brought us each a cup of coffee.

“So?”

“So?” I say loud enough that Maggie looks up. I send her an apologetic smile. Meanwhile, Carter looks cool as a cucumber, his long legs stretched out under the table and resting against my own bench of the booth, forcing me to sit with my legs crisscrossed. “So we’re not talking about a day at Disneyland here. It’s amarriage.”

His only reaction is a lift of his brow and a repeat of the most annoying, “So?”

“So it’s illegal, first off.” Not the actual marriage part, but the part where we do it as a scam. It’d be considered insurance fraud, and I’m pretty sure that can send us to prison if we get caught, or at least earn us a fine that’d be the nail in the coffin of my poor finances. It’s not like I could ask him to pay for my insurance out of his pocket either—that’d be unaffordable with my condition. It’s either through his job or nothing.

He opens his mouth, and I lift a finger. “And please, for the love of all that is good, don’t say ‘So?’”

His lips pinch back together.

“I am not a criminal,” I say, probably more to myself than to him.

That earns me another one of those single nose huffs I realize are probably his version of a laugh.

“What?” I ask.

He does a show of looking me up and down, from the scrunchie I used to tie my hair in a messy knot when getting out of my car to the pink puffer jacket I still have draped across my shoulders. “Somehow, I could’ve guessed that.”

I grit my teeth. He’s only agreed with me, and yet he found a way to do so in the most annoying manner possible. There’s no winning with him, I’m starting to see.

“What I mean is, I don’t normally do stuff like this. I’m not a good liar.” The most illegal thing I ever did was steal a Ring Pop from a drugstore as a kid, and I’d felt so bad I went and put it back five minutes later.

“There’s nothing normal about this. I don’t go around marrying people either.” He shrugs as he crosses his arms. “Plus, it’s not like you’re robbing a bank. You just live in a fucked place where you can’t be healthy for free.”

I guess he makes a good point with that.

On another note, I say, “If we meet someone and want to get married later on, we’ll need to tell them we were married before.” Not a bad thing, per se, but our lie will follow us for the rest of our lives. This is more than a temporary thing.

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