Marry Me Now: An Arranged Marriage Collection

14

John

I’m on my way back from lunch break when my phone starts to ring. It’s the office, though a line I don’t recognize. Not any of my usual secretaries. I pick up, only to hear a harried, familiar male voice on the other end. Daniel.

“Get in here, right now,” he says. “It’s your wife.”

If I’d been holding anything, I would have dropped it. As it is, I barely manage to hang onto my phone. I’d just parked my car, and I fly out of it now, not bothering to lock it behind me as I sprint toward Pitfire. Belatedly, I register the vehicle parked out front, lights flashing.

An ambulance.

Fuck.

Not Mara. Please, let her be safe.

I take the steps two at a time, and once I’m inside the building, I break into a flat out run toward the main stage. It’s where Mara was supposed to be all day today, starting to put together the set she’s been painstakingly preparing in pieces up until now. I know how excited she was about today. How much she enjoys putting a set together like this.

What’s happened to ruin it?

I reach the theater and yank open the double doors at the back, only to nearly collide with a stretcher rolling out of the main entrance. My stomach sinks straight through my shoes and down into the floor. Lying across that stretcher, her eyes shut, an IV stuck into her arm… “Mara!” My voice breaks on that one word.

A paramedic grabs my arm, pulls me back. “Sir, we need to get through.”

“That’s my wife,” I bark.

His grip on my arm relaxes a little, and his expression shifts to one of understanding. “She’s all right, Mr. Walloway. It looks like just a concussion, but we’re going to need to run some tests.”

My gaze darts from her unconscious form to the stretcher, and then follows the thought out to the stage behind her. “What happened?” I bark, and my question isn’t so much directed at the paramedic anymore as it is at the cluster of my employees scattered around the stage. I spot Bianca, pacing back and forth, her head in her hands, her whole body shaking. Near her, but not quite touching her, Daniel is holding something—a frayed piece of rope. There’s wood in splinters all across the stage.

My stomach sinks. The wreckage looks bad. Was Mara in the middle of that?

The paramedic is handing me something. A card, with an address. “Follow us with her things,” he says, and only when he says that do I register other things scattered across the stage. Mara’s purse, a recognizable lump near the side of the stage, almost as if she dropped it in a panic and bolted. “Your wife is going to be fine, I promise.”

It’s an empty promise, I know. Nobody can promise that for anyone else. But still, it does relax me, just a little, to glance past this competent man toward my wife prone on her stretcher, with those words in my ears. She’s going to be fine, I repeat to myself, before I finally relax my hold on the paramedic and let him go to do his job. Let him take care of my Mara.

In the meantime, feeling less than useless, I pace toward the stage, glaring at everyone in my path.

“Explain what happened,” I bark when I reach the stage itself. I grimace, looking at the wreckage. It looks like some wooden contraption fell from a height. It probably even damaged the floorboards of the stage itself. Fuck. This is going to be expensive. But as long as Mara is all right, that’s all I care about.

“I don’t know how it happened,” Daniel is saying, as I cross behind him to scoop up Mara’s things. Her purse. Her wallet. Some other items, including an envelope, that fell out of the purse itself.

I pause mid-gathering to glance at him. He holds up a frayed rope to demonstrate.

“It looks like somebody tampered with this. Cut part of the line to weaken it. But… who would do that?” Daniel’s frown deepens.

But my gaze drifts past him, to where Bianca is sitting on the edge of the stage, rocking back and forth, her head in her hands, moaning a little. Suspicion crystalizes in my gut. I cross toward her, still holding Mara’s things. When I get close enough, I can hear what Bianca’s muttering under her breath.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her; I didn’t. I just wanted to scare her… Just a scare, that’s all…”

With a scowl, I plant myself next to her, arms crossed. “Why,” I say, loud enough to make Bianca jump and spin around, her eyes wide and fixed on me. “Why did you do this,” I repeat, gesturing over my shoulder toward Daniel and the frayed rope he’s holding.

Bianca stares at me, then him, and for a moment, I think she’s going to deny it. Play dumb. It would probably come naturally to her. But then her throat works with a hard swallow, and she bows her head. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispers into her lap.

“What did I ever do to you? What did Mara ever do?”

“Nothing,” Bianca blurts. Then her eyes harden, and she sets her jaw. “It wasn’t me you hurt. It was my sister.”

I frown, confused. “What are you—”

“Heather.”

I stare at her. Of course. Heather had an older half-sister, one she talked about often enough. Though she never mentioned her name. Their last names are different, too… But now that I’m looking, I see the resemblance. The hard set of Bianca’s jaw, the flash in her eyes. “You’re fired,” I spit, too furious to say anything else. “You have fifteen minutes to get off my property before I call the police. And that is being generous, I hope you know,” I add, when Bianca’s eyes narrow in response.

At least she listens, though. She shoves off the stage, shoulders tense, and marches toward the exit.

“The rest of you, clean this up,” I bark, starting to tuck Mara’s things back into her purse. But my fingers pause on the last item. The envelope. Because the creamy paper, embossed with gold around the edges, has my name on it. Written in Mara’s elegant, familiar curving handwriting.

What in the world?

Daniel’s asking questions, something about the stage. I wave a hand. I don’t care. “Charge whatever you need to the company account,” I reply. “Make sure this is safe, next time, before you go testing something prematurely.”

The rest of the crew nod, sobered by the disaster. But my mind is a million miles away from here. I need to get to Mara. I need to be with my wife, to make sure that she’s all right, after everything that just happened.

And along the way… I need to find out what this letter is all about.

I march out of the auditorium, tearing into the envelope as I go. A little part of me feels bad about snooping. But it has my name on it, after all. She clearly intended to give it to me, before this whole mess happened, and interrupted whatever she’d had planned.

And with her in the hospital, I need any sort of connection to her I can reach for. Any way to reassure myself that what the paramedic said on his way out of the doors is true—that she’s going to be fine. That my wife will be okay.

But whatever I expected when I tear into the envelope and read her neat handwriting on the custom card she made for me, it wasn’t this.

John,

The night we met, I let loose for the first time in my life. The next morning, I thought I should regret it. I thought I’d made a mistake. But I didn’t. Letting you into my life—letting you change my whole life—was the best accidental choice I ever made.

Now, I think we might have made another one. A similar one, one that will change everything… but which might just be the best accident we could have hoped for.

I know I told you I wasn’t ready for children. And that’s still true. I’m not ready. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel ready

. But apparently the world had other plans for us. Because I’m pregnant, John. I’m carrying your child.

And, if you’re up for it too… I’d like to keep it. I’d like to start a family with you.

As long as we both agree, we’ll keep pursuing our careers too. We won’t lose sight of ourselves. No matter what happens, this will make us stronger, John. Just like everything else we’ve already faced, together.

I love you.

Beneath it, she included a drawing. It’s me, I can tell that from a glance, but it’s a me I’ve never seen before. Looking at that drawing, at how she views me when I look at her, I see a whole new side of myself—because that’s what she brings out in me. A man I didn’t even know existed before I met her.

A better version of me.

And now… My heart leaps. A huge smile breaks out across my face. She’s pregnant. My wife is pregnant. We’re going to have a baby together.

But as soon as the news hits me, an alternate, terrifying thought occurs. Because I remember her injury, the stretcher. What if something happened? What if she’s hurt worse than the paramedics thought? What if…?

I can’t even allow myself to finish the thought. I refuse. Instead, I stuff the envelope back into Mara’s purse with the rest of her things and practically sprint toward the parking lot. I need to get to the hospital. I need to make sure my wife and our baby—our baby, oh my God, we’re having a baby—are safe. I need to protect my family. Because now, no matter what happens, they come first, always.

15

Mara

“Mara?”

The voice is far off, far away from me, somewhere floating in my subconscious. It’s familiar, reassuring. But I don’t need to worry. Not here, not where I am. I’m lying in a field of tall grass, on a picnic blanket, cradled in my favorite place in the world—against John’s chest, with his arms around me, protective, secure. Beside us on the blanket, a smiling little ball of joy beams up at us, gurgling happily. Our baby, I know, without needing to be told. That’s our child, with us.