Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chelle
Two days later, Chelle was back home with Nash, both of them in ridiculous matching pajamas with cats in Santa hats, blasting the holiday hits playlist while rethinking her choice of buying silver tinsel that now seemed to be everywhere except hanging from the branches of the sad, little, droopy tree that had been the last one left at the corner stand. Tinsel was in her hair. Sir Hiss had stolen clumps of it, piling it up in the highest part of his cat stand. Mary Puppins had enough of it on her to look like she was wearing an avant-garde doggie outfit.
So yeah, tree trimming this year was pretty much chaos. Chelle couldn’t be happier about it—and no, that wasn’t the spiked eggnog talking.
Standing by the archway dividing the living room from the kitchen and watching Nash dance—badly—and sing—off-key—while holding Groucho Barks tucked up against him like a football as he tossed strands of the devil’s paper, Chelle took a moment to soak in the domestic bliss of the moment. Focusing on the ridiculousness of Nash shaking his perfect ass to “Jingle Bell Rock” made it easier to pretend this was her life, now and forever. And when she did that, she didn’t have to think about the fact that Christmas—and the end of their marriage—was only three days away. Oh sure, they’d give it until after New Year’s because who wants to file for divorce in the dead space between one holiday and the next, but as soon as the Christmas tree Nash overwhelmed with tinsel was on the curb, her marriage would go in the bin, too.
All of the conditions had now been met. They’d had their six dates, starting with IKEA, then the tabletop games, food truck crawl, the mani/pedi, decorating Gable House, and tonight, picking out the perfect Christmas tree. That hateful summons from her uncle still sat in her desk drawer, but she’d talked to a lawyer and he’d agreed Nash’s plan of a temporary marriage still counted as a marriage for the sake of the will. He was confident the judge, even one who golfed with her uncle, would agree. The foundation would be safe.
She should be happy, thrilled, ecstatic. She had gotten everything she wanted. And yet there was a large nugget of coal sitting in her stomach, weighing her down.
She took a gulp of spiked eggnog, letting the burn of whiskey going down pull her away from the edge of regret before she did something stupid, like asking Nash if he wanted to make this marriage of convenience a real one. He’d probably say yes just because he wanted to help her—he’d be her pity husband. He couldn’t help himself. If he thought there was advice he could give or an action he could take that would make someone’s life easier, he offered it up.
The thing was, though, that she didn’t want anyone with her because they were just being nice or thought they were fixing her life. She wanted someone with her because they couldn’t imagine being without her. She couldn’t blame Nash for not feeling that way about her. He’d always been honest about what this marriage was—and what it wasn’t.
Three days.
Seventy-two hours.
Then the lawyers got involved.
Her phone buzzed on the bookshelf.
UGH. So that’s where I left it.
She’d been in the middle of scrolling through emails, looking for an update about Uncle Buckley’s latest ploy to get a judge to declare her marriage didn’t fit the requirements of her dad’s will, when she’d distractedly put her phone down because Nash came out in his cat pajamas. Really, how did he manage to look so hot wearing a clothing ode to festive kitties? It wasn’t fair.
Her phone vibrated again. She picked it up off of the stack of Shelly Laurenston books that had changed her thoughts about honey badgers forever and glanced down at the screen.
Pulse pounding, she read the text from her lawyer again. And again. And a fourth time just to really make sure it said what she thought it did.
“What’s wrong?” Nash asked, setting Groucho down and hurrying over to her side.
If she could have formed words without the truth tumbling out, she would have. Instead, she turned her phone so the screen faced Nash as she worked to keep her outward demeanor neutral. There was no reason to let on that she was—in a weird way—disappointed.
“Well, that’s good news, right?” His shoulders a twelve million on a ten-point tension scale, Nash rubbed his palm against the back of his neck and kept his attention focused on her phone. “The judge sided with you on the marriage. Nothing in the will stipulated how long you had to be married. That’s great. It’s perfect. It—”
Is fucking awful, a voice screamed in her head.
“Is exactly why we did this,” she said instead of letting that voice out. “Thank you for helping me save the foundation from my uncle.”
That was the important part. The fact that all she wanted to do now was curl up into a ball under the Christmas tree and listen to “All I Want for Christmas is You” on repeat while eating badly decorated sugar cookies didn’t matter. Keeping her gaze averted until she could get the whole blinking away her suddenly watery eyes thing out of the way, Chelle took a deep breath, trying to get herself under control. This was exactly what she’d wanted from the beginning. This was what they’d agreed to. The fact that she’d fallen in love with him didn’t change anything. This was the perfect reminder that all of this—right down to the obnoxious silver tinsel she’d still be finding the remnants of in the corners and crevices in her apartment this summer—was part of an arrangement. It wasn’t real, no matter how much it had become real to her.
“Well,” Nash said as he took his phone out of his pajama pocket, “I was saving this for Christmas, but if we’re celebrating, we might as well double it.”
He tapped the screen a few times and handed her his phone. She scanned the email from his brother, looking for Nash’s good news. It wasn’t until the third sentence that she realized this email wasn’t about Nash at all. It was about her. More specifically, her books.
Everything inside Chelle turned cold and quiet, as if she’d just jumped into the icy lake behind Gable House and had sunk to the bottom. The Christmas music went away. The happy yapping of the pugs silenced. Even the sound of her furiously beating heart and the pounding of her pulse in her ear was muted. Emotional muscle memory honed by a lifetime with her father and his men-know-best ways took over at that moment. The coldness insulated her from the fire-hot pain of Nash doing what she never thought he would.
How could you be so stupid, Michelle? You knew better. From the very first moment you met him, he told you exactly who he was—a mansplainer.
But she’d seen him up close for weeks now, and she’d let herself be fooled. All this time she thought Nash was different—better—than the other men in her life, the ones who tried to control her life right down to her ability to do the job she loved at the foundation that made a difference for so many people. Now Nash was trying to control the other part of her life that had always only belonged to her. Her stories. Her fantasy worlds. Her escape.
A weary sigh escaped as she handed Nash his phone. “You gave your brother my book?”
“I knew he’d love it!” He wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, lifting her up off the ground and spinning her. “This is amazing, right?”
“Yeah, amazing,” she said, a hot ember of anger starting to defrost the numbness.
Nash put her down, shooting her a double dimpler as he grabbed her hand and pulled her into the kitchen. “So, you don’t have to sign with Macon as your agent, obviously, so don’t stress about that.” He stopped in front of the fridge, opening it and getting out a bottle of champagne that she hadn’t bought. “If you want to stay with him, though, he’s really good. He reps a lot of big authors. If you don’t, I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
She yanked her hand out of his grasp, not bothering to keep her anger out of her tone. “Not even if I want to submit my book for publication.”
Nash paused in front of the open cabinet, where he’d been reaching for two champagne flutes, his dimples disappearing as his smile flattened into a grim line. “Actually, it hasn’t been sent to an editor yet. All of that was unofficial chatting, because Macon doesn’t officially represent you yet.”
“Oh, you didn’t decide that for me, too?” she asked, each word as brittle as she felt at that moment.
“I don’t understand why you’re mad.” Nash set the champagne bottle down on the counter as the dogs circled his feet. “This is a good thing.”
“Uh-huh,” she said in that tone, the one a woman gets in that moment between her heart breaking and the actual pain of it hitting, gutting her and leaving her empty. Groucho’s and Mary’s ears perked up at the sound, and they scurried out of the kitchen, their tails tucked. “And when I gave you copies of my book to read, what did I tell you?”
Nash crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Not to give feedback, and I didn’t.”
Who in the fuck was he to take a defensive posture here as if she was the one who was wrong?
“I also told you that I didn’t want to publish them,” she said, fighting to keep the emotion out of her tone and off her face. “They aren’t ready.”
“A publisher is ready to pay a million dollars for it,” he said, throwing his arms up in the air, his frustration as obvious as the vein bulging in his temple. “I’m pretty sure that means it’s ready.”
“And you know best, right?” God, why did this hurt so much? She should shut up, not give in to the hurt and heartache that would let him label her as hysterical or overreacting, but she couldn’t help herself. All of it just came pouring out in strained sentences that pushed their way through the emotion making her throat raw. “I’m just the silly woman who needs to get out of the way when it comes to making decisions even if they involve me? It’s a good thing my dad put that clause in his will or who knows what I’d be up to.”
“I am not like your dad,” he all but roared at her.
“Really?” she scoffed, pain streaking through her entire body like a million electric shocks. How could she have been so oblivious to what had been right in front of her face the entire time? “Did you not just make a major, life-altering decision for me, not only without any of my input but by doing something I’d expressly said I didn’t want?”
“This isn’t like that,” he said more calmly this time, reaching out to her. “I was just trying to help.”
She sidestepped, avoiding his touch as she locked eyes with him. “Yeah, well, I think you’ve helped enough.” She stalked over to the front door, each step stiff, and pulled it open. “You got what you wanted out of this. Six dates. No falling in love. You’re going to win your Last Man Standing bet. I got what I wanted, and my uncle can’t force me out of the foundation and close it. We both have everything we ever wanted so, actually, it’s past time we called quits on this whole marriage charade.”
He started toward her, his hands up in supplication. “Chelle—”
She shut him up with a glare. “For my entire life, men have been telling me they know what’s best for me. There was my dad and the bullshit clause in his will requiring me to get married. Then there was my uncle trying to maneuver me into accepting my real position in the world as a helpmate for my husband.” She sucked in a breath, blinking away the tears threatening to fall. She would not let them. Later, when she was alone, she wouldn’t fight it, but not now, in front of the man she’d fallen in love with, the one she thought saw her as capable, worthy, an equal. “Then there’s you, deciding what the best thing was for my books. I’ve had enough. Go home, Nash—your own home.”
Shoulders slumped, face down, he walked over to the door, stopping long enough to give the two dogs scratches under their collars. Then he let out a defeated sigh and looked up at her, his own gaze watery.
“I won’t do it again,” he said, his voice breaking. “Please…give me another chance.”
“Nash, you’ve been doing this your entire life. It’s who you are. You can’t help but help people—even when they don’t need it or want it.” She couldn’t stop the tears now. They slid down her cheeks as fast as she wiped them away with a hard scrub of the back of her hand. “Please, just leave.”
He took one last look at her, as if he was memorizing every last detail, and then walked out her front door.
It was exactly what she wanted.
It was exactly what she knew would happen.
And it was the worst moment of her life.