Page 54 of Merry Fake Bride

Snow drifts in the air, fine enough that when I look up through the scarf bundled around my neck, flakes drift aimlessly through the dark sky then melt into nothing as they reach the ball of light rising from my parents’ patio.

I sit, embracing the bitter chill that numbs my hands and legs while hugging a mug of my father’s tea and gazing out at the trees lining our property.

I spent all day cooking and baking while barely saying a word to either of my parents, still reeling from Kairo’s offer yesterday.

It’s easy to get caught up in work since Thanksgiving is just two weeks away, and we’re up to our eyeballs in pies and themed cakes.

Thankfully, my parents haven’t taken my silence personally.

But marriage.

Real marriage.

He spoke about something so huge, something soimportantlike it really was nothing.

How can he be so throwaway about something like that?

Then again, we became engaged on a whim and I accepted it through the sheer relief of avoiding a forty-thousand-dollar medical debt.

But marriage?

Puffing out my cheeks, clouds of my breath curl past my lips and out into the night air, dissipating above me like a miniature cloud.

Something so important shouldn’t be thrown around so casually, unless it’s just a thing that men do.

Kairo was gentle in his delivery, but something about how easily he tossed that idea out between us reminded me painfully of Axel.

The air around me turns even more bitter as the thought of him crawls over my skin. I

huddle into my coat and sip my tea, trying to chase the taste of his memory away.

I’ve left him behind in a past I’m never going to return to, so it doesn’t matter that I woke up one morning to him thrusting what looked like a marriage certificate in my face while gloating that I was going to be with him forever.

He gave me a black eye when I questioned the legitimacy of the document and my lack of memory of any sort of wedding.

I refuse to believe it was real.

Even drunken me, drowning under the shots Axel would force down my throat, wouldn’t be stupid enough to sayI doto a man like that.

He just wanted another reason to hurt and berate me when my name wasn’t changed on my driver’s license. I’m sure of it.

But I’d forgotten about all of that, blocked it out in the deepest parts of my mind until Kairo so casually mentioned marriage like we were discussing the storm.

At least he gave his reasoning, and a few hours after I left his place and overcame the swell of panic that made it feel like I was drowning with every breath I took, I had time to think.

He suggested it like some kind of business deal, and maybe that’s how it would be treated.

Would there be a contract of some kind between us to ensure neither of us got screwed over?

And then an annulment once I used his riches to save the bakery.

But what kind of legal tape is there about my using his money for the bakery?

When we divorce, do I lose it again?

These questions rattling around my mind are the ones I should have asked Kairo while in his kitchen, but instead, I ran, fearing that the sexy, handsome, kind man I’m rapidly falling for was about to morph into my ex.

Unless it’s another trick.