Page 40 of Carry On

“But it’s really just a fake marriage.”

“But on paper it’s real.”

“Papers don’t mean shit,” he replied with a shrug. I opened my mouth to say something but promptly shut it. Papers were everything, especially legally.

“We’ll come back around to just how wrongallof that is,” I informed him, but he just made a sound that told me we’d never be having that conversation. “We need to go over ground rules for this thing, and we need to spend time getting to know each other. I have a list of questions.”

“Why?” Nash demanded. “Does the insurance company need to know that we know things about each other?”

Fuck. There was a good chance this was where I was going to lose him.

“This can’t just be on paper for the insurance company,” I said carefully. “While yes, it’s a fake marriage, you do realize that I have a social life.”

“I don’t give a fuck who you date.”

“It’ll start to look real fucking weird if I’m married on paper at my company, but not married in life outside that door.” I gestured to my front door. “It’ll be fake, but out there, you’d have to be my husband. Where the world is concerned, we’d be married.”

“Right,” he drawled, nodding slowly. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he thought it through. Yeah, he hadn’t realized that part either. “I’m not your fucking toy, Linc.”

“ I know.”

“You said you’d help me.”

“I know.”

“This was supposed to be about the insurance,” Nash continued. “I’m not about to be paraded around like some stupid kind of arm candy.”

“Well, you are adorable enough to be just that,” I quipped before I thought better of it. Thankfully, a ghost of a smile turned the corner of his mouth. Point for me. “Look, I get it. It’s the crappiest part of the agreement, but my life is full of attachments and expectations.”

“Sounds miserable,” he muttered under his breath. Compared to his no-walls, wandering lifestyle, I had to imagine it didn’t make sense.

“Yeah, well,” I shrugged slightly, “it’s my life.”

I watched in silence as he tore off a tiny piece of bread and chewed on it. He swiveled in his chair to stare out the long windows in my living room, the expression on his face unreadable, something severe and intense. Those green eyes were a million miles away as he thought it through.

I gave him the time he needed and focused on eating my fries. He’d get there when he was ready. I knew it was one thing to offer medical help, but it was another to completely uproot his lifestyle.

“I won’t let you change me,” Nash said finally, his voice quiet. “I don’t want to be one ofthem.”

That single word dripped with disdain, the kind that came with years of thought and built-up emotion. I wasn’t sure who he meant, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask either.

“Okay.”

“I am who I am,” he continued as he tore off another piece of bread. He rolled the dough between his fingers, staring hard at it. “I’d rather be dead than cave to the pressures of a system built on the pain and extortion of those they deem beneath them.”

There was something in his voice—something I couldn’t quite place—that ebbed its way into the back of my mind. Some kind of haunted experience laced his words, building a world I had no understanding of and one he knew all too well.

A world where he and I were brutally divided by the socio-economic line designed to bury people.

“Okay, “ I repeated softly. “Ground rule number one… I won’t let this arrangement change you.”

CHAPTER 31

NASH

Groundrulenumberone:there was no way in hell I was letting the system that made him change me.

The system doesn’t care about you,the voice reminded me.