Jessica
His gray eyes pin me to the bench. They are not kind. They are the color of a storm gathering over the ocean, calculating and intense. For a moment, the world narrows to the space between us, the hum of the fluorescent lights, and the frantic, stupid thumping of my own broken heart.
He looks away first, his attention snapping back to the phone as if my presence is a minor, irrelevant distraction.
“Leo, listen to me very carefully,” he says, his voice a low, dangerous growl. He turns his back to me again, but the sound carries perfectly in the quiet hall. “The board meeting is on Monday. The succession clause in my grandfather’s will is explicit. If I am not married by the close of business today, everything goes to my cousin. Do you understand what that means for the company? For all of us?”
He pauses, listening. I can almost hear the frantic apologies from the man on the other end.
“Excuses are worthless to me,” Xavier snaps. “Solutions are what I pay for. You had one job. Find a woman, vet her, make sure she shows up. You failed on the most critical point. So now you have one more chance. Find someone else. I’ll be waiting here for thirty minutes. After that, you’re fired.”
He ends the call without a goodbye. The silence that follows is heavy, filled with his contained fury. He slowly turns around, his gaze sweeping the empty hallway before landing on me once more.
This is it. The moment the insanity crests. My bare feet are cold against the linoleum. My dress is a mockery. My life is a smoking crater. I have absolutely nothing.
Which means I have nothing to lose.
I push myself to my feet. The rustle of satin and tulle is shockingly loud. His eyes narrow as I take a step toward him.
“You need a bride,” I say. My voice sounds strange, a reedy echo of itself, but it doesn’t waver.
One of his dark eyebrows lifts in a gesture of pure, condescending disbelief. “I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“Does this look like a joke to you?” I gesture down at my ruined dress, at the tear streaks I can feel tight on my cheeks. “My fiancé just announced he’s in love with his assistant. In front of two hundred of our closest friends and family. At the altar.”
The words come out flat and factual, devoid of the hysteria churning inside me. Maybe my capacity for emotion is simply exhausted.
He doesn’t offer sympathy. He just watches me, his expression unreadable. “A tragic story. It has nothing to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you,” I counter, taking another step. “You need a bride. I am a bride. A bride with no groom, a dress, and a sudden, very empty schedule.”
A flicker of something that isn’t pity and isn’t annoyance crosses his face. It’s a sharp, clinical interest. The way a scientist might look at an unexpected variable.
“You have sharp ears,” he says. It’s not a compliment.
“I have nothing else to do except listen to other people’s disasters. It makes my own feel a little less lonely.” I manage a small, brittle smile. “Your contract bride stood you up. My groom ran off. It seems like fate has a twisted sense of humor.”
“I don’t believe in fate,” he states, his tone clipped. “I believe in contracts and leverage. What’s your angle?”
“My angle?” I almost laugh. “My angle is I can’t go back there. I can’t go home to my parents’ pitying looks. I can’t face my friends. I just want to escape this day. Marry me, get your inheritance, and in exchange, you give me a place to disappear for a while.”
He crosses his arms, a formidable wall of bespoke tailoring and sheer disapproval. “You want me to marry a complete stranger based on a thirty second pitch in a courthouse hallway because you had a bad day?”
“It was a historically bad day,” I correct him. “And you’re about to have one too if you don’t find a wife in the next… what did you say? Twenty eight minutes?”
His jaw tightens. I hit a nerve.
“I know your type,” he says, his voice soft and laced with steel. “You see a man in a good suit and you smell an opportunity.”
“Your suit is the last thing I care about right now,” I shoot back, a spark of real anger cutting through the numbness. “I spent the last ten years of my life supporting a man I thought was building a future with me. I put my own dreams aside for his. And he threw it all away. Believe me, the last thing I’m looking for is another man to depend on. This is a transaction.”
The raw, ugly truth of my words hangs in the air between us. He studies my face, and for the first time, I think he sees past the spectacle of the dress to the wreckage underneath. He sees the genuine despair in my eyes.
“My name is Xavier Sterling,” he says finally, the shift in tone catching me off guard.
“Jessica,” I reply, my voice barely a whisper.
“Just Jessica?”
“For now, it’s better that way.”
He nods slowly, a decision solidifying behind those stormy eyes. “A contract will be drawn up. My lawyers will handle it. It will outline the terms of this arrangement. The duration, financial compensation, clauses of conduct.”
“Fine,” I agree, though my mind can’t process any of it. Financial compensation? I just wanted a hole to crawl into.
“It will be a marriage in name only. For appearance’s sake. For my grandfather.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I say, the thought of any kind of intimacy making my stomach clench with revulsion.
He gives me one last, long look, as if memorizing the details of the mess I am. He seems to weigh every possible risk, every disastrous outcome, and then discard them all.
“Alright, Jessica,” he says, his voice all business. “Let’s get married.”
The next few minutes are a surreal blur. He makes a call, speaking in low, clipped tones. “Leo. Plan B is in effect… No, you did not find her. I did… Just handle the paperwork. Have it ready for my signature by the time I get back to the office.”
He leads me not to a grand courtroom, but to a small, sterile office with beige walls and a single dying plant in the corner. A clerk with a tired face and a name tag that reads ‘Brenda’ looks up from her computer, her expression barely flickering at the sight of me in my wedding gown.
“Marriage license?” she asks, her voice monotone.
Xavier produces passports, forms I didn’t even see him carrying. He’s ruthlessly efficient. He slides a pen and a document across the counter to me.
“Sign here,” he instructs.
My hand trembles as I take the pen. I look at the line. My name. Jessica Rose Miller. The last time I’ll ever write it. I think of the monogrammed towels waiting in boxes at my apartment, the custom stationery. All of it branded with the initials of a life that just evaporated.
I sign.
Xavier signs his name with a sharp, decisive flick of his wrist. Xavier C. Sterling.
Brenda stamps the document with a loud, final thud. “Witnesses?”
Xavier glances around the empty office. “Is there a problem?”
“Need two,” she says, not looking up.
A janitor pushes a cleaning cart past the open door. Xavier doesn’t hesitate. “Sir. A moment of your time.”
The janitor, a man in his sixties with kind eyes, looks from Xavier’s suit to my dress, his brow furrowed in confusion. Brenda sighs and points to the witness line. The janitor signs. Brenda signs the other line herself.
“Raise your right hands,” Brenda drones. “Do you, Xavier, take Jessica to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do,” he says, his voice firm, unwavering. He is looking at the clerk, not at me.
“Do you, Jessica, take Xavier to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
My throat is tight. The words are stuck. This is insane. This is the act of a crazy person. But the alternative is walking back out onto that street, alone. Back to the pity.
“I do,” I whisper. The words are a ghost of the ones I practiced in front of a mirror this morning.
“By the power vested in me by the State, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” Brenda slaps the stamped license down on the counter. “Congratulations, or whatever. You’ll get the official certificate in the mail.”
And that’s it.
No kiss. No swelling music. No joyous tears. Just the hum of the computer and the squeak of the janitor’s cart retreating down the hall.
We are married.
I stand there, frozen, a stranger legally bound to the cold, imposing man beside me. The weight of what I’ve just done crashes down on me. I’ve traded one catastrophe for another, and I don’t even know which is worse.
Xavier takes the license and folds it neatly, tucking it into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. Then he turns to me. His expression is unchanged. He is still a businessman who has just closed a difficult but necessary deal.
“My car is outside,” he says.
It’s not a question. It’s a command.
He starts walking toward the exit, expecting me to follow. And I do. Like a sleepwalker, like a ghost in a white dress, I follow my husband out of the courthouse and into a life I cannot begin to imagine.
