The Marriage Contract (Anderson Brothers)

“What was that all about?” Jordan asked.

“I was just telling Chloe how happy I am for her and Matt,” Hannah said, sitting down beside her husband. “And that I think it’s wonderful that they found love together.”

I sat down and looked over at Matt. He gave me a warm smile, and the butterflies rushed back into my belly.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m just going to slip to the restroom really fast.”

“You want me to come with you?” Hannah asked.

I shook my head. “No. It’s fine. Look, the waiter is coming over. Go ahead and order. You know what I like.”

That wasn’t said to anyone in particular, and I was very curious about what I was going to end up eating considering I didn’t actually know if anyone at that table would be able to choose something from the menu I would really like. But I didn’t care. I needed to get away from them and have a second to breathe.

I got to the bathroom and locked the door. Leaning over the sink, I took a deep breath, then filled my cupped hand with a little bit of water and flicked it onto my face. Those butterflies had to go away. I couldn’t even begin to entertain those kinds of thoughts. This was fake. It was a game, a performance. I had to keep that in mind and remind myself I wasn’t allowed to catch feelings for him. That would just make things far too complicated.

When I felt like I had myself together, I went back to the table. We already had drinks, and I took a couple of sips. We ate and talked, and I managed to stay smiling and forcing laughs throughout it, but when it was time to head home, I fell quiet. Matt looked over at me a few times, but I didn’t look back his way.

“Did you enjoy dinner?” he asked.

“It was good,” I said.

“I thought you would like the mushroom pasta. When I saw it on the specials list, it just sounded like you.”

I was a little surprised. When the food was delivered and it was a beautiful plate of fresh pasta mixed with a garlic cream sauce and mushrooms, I was delighted. I also figured Hannah had to have ordered it for me. I hadn’t asked about it because I didn’t want Matt to feel bad. Now I was finding out that he was the one to choose it for me.

“You picked that?” I asked.

He nodded. “You liked it?”

“It was wonderful.”

I went quiet again, staring out the windshield as I tried to process what I was feeling. Somehow finding out that he was the one who chose my dinner for me made this even more confusing and complicated.

“Are you okay?” Matt asked a few minutes later.

I didn’t even know how to respond.

23

Matt

I wasn’t sure what was going on with Chloe, but whatever it was, it was starting to bug me. She had been weird since the ceremony. No matter what I said or did to try to bring us back to how we had been beforehand, she was distant and standoffish. It was unlike how she had been the entire time I knew her, and I was worried I had done or said something wrong. But when I asked her, she said no, that everything was fine.

I knew better than to believe that “fine” actually meant “fine.”

I wished I had known that she was going to regret our situation if that’s what it was. I wouldn’t blame her for it, really. Getting married was a big deal, and I was sure she had a lot better ideas about how her wedding would be than getting hitched in a courthouse to a guy she wasn’t actually in love with. But still, I wished I had known. The last thing I wanted to do was make her feel like this was something she had to do. Bullying her into it was completely opposite of the plan. This was supposed to be something that benefited both of us.

We had our first shift together since the wedding that night. Most of the day was spent with her on her laptop in the living room. I knew she was a bit of a news junkie, so I didn’t push it, but I kind of wished we could have hung out and watched something together. I was missing the time before our wedding. Inexplicably, it seemed like we were closer then.

But, then again, I had to back off that, too. We weren’t supposed to be close. Just friendly. We had to be able to feign a relationship, not actually have one. Maybe she just needed her distance so she could be comfortable. I had to respect that.

When we got to the bar, she got out of the car silently before I did and waited for me. When I got to her, it was like she was a completely different person. The game face was on, and she was smiling wide. She took my hand and curled up on my arm as we walked. I couldn’t help but feel simultaneous delight and sadness. I loved that she held me that way right in the moment, but I was suddenly upset that it was only because she was putting on an act.