Page 102 of Accidental Groom
“When?” I bark, a bitter laugh crawling up my chest. “After she’s born? When I asked the right questions? Jesus, Elena, come on.”
“I wanted to tell you sooner,” she says, her voice breaking. “And then I panicked. And I was going to when I got home. I just didn’t want to do it over text — you deserve better than that.”
My breath catches in my throat. “I deserve better than that?” I rasp. “I deserve better thanallof this.”
She flinches. “I know.”
I don’t hesitate. I need to know. “Did you leave him because of the contract?”
She goes still, stone still, her eyes searching mine like she’s either mortified or wildly confused. “What?”
Chapter 37
Elena
“Did you leave him because of the contract?”
It hits like a slap. Not the volume — he doesn’t yell it. It’s the weight. It’s the audacity of the assumption, knocking the air from my lungs. My body goes still, not a stiffening, not a bracing. It’s as though something inside of me momentarily shuts off, stunned by the jagged question.
“What?” I breathe.
“Did you leave him,” he repeats, “because of the contract?”
I blink at him. That’s what he thinks. That’s what he’s built in his head, after everything.
But then the silence stretches, and I feel it, thread by thread, coming together. That’s the way it looks to him. The things I never said, the details he’d found, the texts, the name, the trip, the timing, the marriage license he no doubt found with Matthew’s help.
Shit.
“No,” I whisper, blinking hard. I push my hands into my hair, realizing just how bad this is. “No, that’s not it at all. That’s—fuck, Harry, you’ve got it all wrong.”
He exhales sharply, the sound bitter, like he doesn’t believe me. “Then explain it,” he growls. “Because from where I’mstanding, it sure as hell looks like you bolted the second things got hard and ran straight into the arms of a man you weremarriedto!”
“I wasn’t—” I swallow, cutting myself off, trying to arrange my thoughts before I speak. I don’t want to mess this up any more than it already is. “I wasn’twithhim, not like that. Ross and I… fuck, we’ve never been a thing. Ever. We were just friends. Always. The marriage wasn’t real, Harry, I swear.”
His arms are folded across his chest, his jaw tight, his eyes narrowed. He’s wearing his home clothes, the nice ones, the ones that look somewhat professional when he’s having meetings from his home office, the henley with a nice sweater over it and the slacks that are secretly elastic waist, his black wool coat on top. But his hair is a mess, like he hasn’t stopped touching it for hours.
I can’t read him like this — and that terrifies me. He hasn’t been unreadable for me in months, not since a few weeks after the wedding when I learned him by heart. Even when he’s trying to mask something, there’s always a little bit hiding. But right now, he could be about to kiss me or walk off the roof, and I’d see neither coming.
“I need to explain to me exactly what you mean in believable terms,” he says quietly. “Now.”
I exhale through my mouth, digging deep and trying to find the version of myself that doesn’t want to run from him. “Okay,” I say carefully, sniffling a little. “Okay, just… just listen.”
He doesn’t move. So I speak.
“Ross’s mom was dying,” I start. “Years ago. I was twenty, I think. Maybe nineteen. She lived upstate, and Ross had just joined the military a few months prior. They stationed him out in San Diego, and they were being awful about letting him switch back to New York to take care of her. He was freaking out, and I went on Google, and we were young and couldn’t thinkof anything else. He had a few different ideas, but I told him it would look suspicious if he tried a bunch of shit first, so we just… did it.”
I take a shaky breath, the wind whipping around my face, and I already regret taking my hair down, but the cold is biting and I can’t feel my toes.
“I married him so he could transfer back. Military spousal placement, or something. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’tanything, it was just paperwork and a favor.”
His expression doesn’t shift.
“We were married on paper only,” I explain. “Nothing more. No rings, no real vows other than the same ones you and I did at the courthouse. No honeymoon. We didn’t live together, and I only saw him when I occasionally helped with his mom. I didn’t tell anyone other than Sarah. We got divorced after his mom passed, and that was it, it was done.”
He blinks at me, processing. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he says, his voice still too quiet. “If it was nothing.”
“I wanted to,” I croak, my voice breaking again. “But I couldn’t. At least not at first, I didn’t know you, and I didn’t know what the contract said about that on my end. I didn’t want it to invalidate everything, I didn’t want my parents to force Sarah into all of this instead?—”
