Chapter 5

Teresa showed up at six thirty with a curling iron in a grocery bag and didn't bother knocking twice.

"You didn't sleep," she said, not really a question, setting up shop on my bathroom counter.

"Not really."

"Sit down. Nobody needs to know that from the outside." She huffed.

Luz sat on the closed toilet lid in her cute pink skirt and white tee, one of the few good dresses I can afford, watching the whole production like it was better than cartoons. She'd known Teresa her whole life, four years of borrowed sugar and babysitting favors between our two apartments. Teresa is the closest thing to a friend I have, and now she's here helping me get married. The irony. I don't want her to know what I am going through, and I did not want anyone to be at that wedding.

"Are you gonna wear a big dress? Like a real wedding dress?" Luz asked, a whole question mark on her face.

"It's not that kind of wedding, Mija." Teresa looked at me. "It's a small wedding," I faked a smile.

"Is there cake?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

She thought about that for a second, chewing her lip. "Is he handsome? Rowan?"

I nearly dropped the mascara wand. "Why does that matter?"

"Because if my sissy's gonna marry someone, he should at least be handsome." Total seriousness, like she was reviewing a résumé. "Is he?"

"He's fine," I said, which was the understatement of my entire year, and Teresa laughed so hard behind me she nearly singed my hair. "Go get your backpack."

Luz ran off to get her bag while I tried to look decent in the off-white formal dress that came up to my calves, which Marissa had sent over. The fabric felt soft and smooth against my hands, expensive in a way I wasn't used to touching, let alone wearing.

After Teresa congratulated me and left the house, I lit the candle at the altar before we left anyway, knowing it would burn down alone. Pressed my palm flat against the wall beside my mother's photo and stood there a second, not saying anything out loud.

Mami. Please give me strength, I whispered.

We left in a car Rowan's office had sent, a driver in a dark suit who didn't ask a single question the whole ride over.

The ceremony took place in a small room on the second floor of the county courthouse, a different wing than the one I knew from every custody hearing, this one smelling of fresh paint instead of old carpet. Marissa was already there. Gray suit, dark hair pulled back, silver threaded through it now in a way that looked earned. Arms crossed, eyes moving over the room like she was cataloguing exits.

Rowan stood near the front, in a dark suit, no tie again. Ties, apparently, were a courtesy he hadn't decided to extend to his own wedding either. Fake wedding, yeah. He looked up when the door opened, and something crossed his face that I didn't have time to read before it disappeared.

Next to him stood a man I hadn't met yet. Sandy brown hair a little too long for corporate, hazel eyes crinkled at the corners like he was already amused by something before he'd opened his mouth. Broader through the shoulders than his easy stance let on, hands in his pockets, grinning at the room like weddings were his favorite sport. He had a bouquet tucked under one arm, small, simple, the kind you'd pick up from a corner stand rather than order from a florist, and something about a stranger bothering with flowers for a wedding nobody was supposed to care about caught me off guard more than it should have.

"You must be Camila." He stuck a hand out before Rowan could say a word. "Julian Cross. Best man, best friend, and unofficially the only person in this building who knew the bride needed a bouquet."

"That's generous of you," I replied, holding the bouquet.

"It's accurate." He crouched down toward Luz. "And you must be the reason everyone's actually happy about this wedding. I hear you're the one really running this operation."

Luz, who did not warm up to strange men easily, looked up at him and smiled anyway.

"I like your shoes," she said, apparently her highest available compliment.

"Best thing anyone's said to me all week." He grinned over her head at me. "I like her already."

The judge kept it short, glasses pushed halfway down her nose, a few lines about commitment that I only half heard. When she asked Rowan if he took me, he said I do flat and even, no hesitation anywhere in it. When she turned to me, my own voice came out thinner than I meant, and my eyes went hot in a way that had nothing to do with the fluorescent lights.

I don't remember most of what she said after that. I remember thinking, somewhere in the middle of my own I do, that I'd never once let myself imagine my wedding, not really, not the way other girls do growing up. There hadn't been time. Not after our parents died, not with Ricardo circling, not with two jobs and a nine-year-old depending on me for everything. Standing in a courthouse room, marrying a stranger for a payout and a legal shield, some quiet, stubborn part of me thought maybe next time it would be real. Maybe next time it would be for love. I let out a short, sad laugh at myself for even having the thought, quiet enough that only Rowan seemed to catch it.

Rowan's jaw shifted. A muscle at the corner of it went tight and stayed that way through the rest of the ceremony.

The judge asked for the ring. Marissa handed me a small box, plain gold, nothing showy. Rowan's hand stayed steady around mine while he said his half of it. When she told him he could kiss me, my stomach dropped half a second before his mouth found mine, quick and careful, gone almost as fast as it landed. His hand cupped my jaw for that half second, then it was gone, softer than anything else about him.

Julian whistled behind us, low and delighted. "Very convincing for two people who apparently can't talk to each other."

"We can talk to each other," I said, before I could stop the words.

"Noted," Rowan said, echoing his own line from that first meeting, and one corner of his mouth pulled up in something that almost passed for real.

I signed my name to my own life today, and somewhere between the ring and the car ride, the feeling of it caught up to me all at once, quiet and heavy, more numb than sad, though not far off from that either.

The drive to the house took almost forty minutes. Luz fell asleep against my shoulder around minute ten. Rowan sat across from us, phone in hand, thumb tapping the edge of the case instead of the screen, the same tic I was starting to recognize as him working something over that he had no plans of saying out loud.

She woke up right as we turned through the gates, and her whole body went rigid against my side.

Pale stone rose up ahead of us, three stories, ivy climbing one whole wing thick enough to hide half the windows behind it. A circular drive wrapped around a stone fountain, dry, no water running through it. Hedges cut into shapes too sharp-edged to be anything but professionally maintained. Staff were already crossing the gravel toward the car before it had fully stopped.

"Cami." Her whisper dropped low, church-quiet. "Is that a hotel?"

"It's the house."

"It's a hotel." Face pressed to the glass. "Cami, there's a fountain. Are there gonna be swans in it?"

"I don't know, Mija."

"There should be swans." Total conviction, like she was filing a formal request with the property manager.

Rowan didn't laugh, though his mouth twitched at one corner.

Once we were out of the car, Luz walked straight up to him while I was still trying to process what had just happened to my entire life, planted her feet, and looked him up and down slowly.

"So you're my sissy's husband now."

"That's right."

"For real? Or for real, like when my Ken marries my Barbie, and then I get bored and marry him to someone else next week?"

I choked on nothing at all. Rowan didn't even blink.

"For real," he said. "No trading you or your sister off to another doll next week. That's not how this works." His eyes found mine over the top of Luz's head, held there a beat longer than the moment needed. At least I'm not replaceable until the year's up, I thought, and hated myself a little for how much comfort I still took from an answer with an expiration date stitched into it.

Luz weighed his answer like she was reviewing evidence in a trial only she could see. "Okay. But if you're mean to her, I'll tell Julian, and I think Julian likes her more than he likes you."

"That's likely true," Julian called from behind us, already hauling the bouquet and both our bags toward the front steps like he'd appointed himself in charge of both.

Rowan crouched down to Luz's level, knees cracking slightly on the way down. "You're going to have your own room. If there's anything about it you want changed, you tell someone, and it gets changed. That's not a joke."

Luz nodded, finally quiet, out of questions for the first time all day. It was the way he said it to her, plain and certain, like a promise instead of a policy, that made something twist behind my ribs, quick and warm and entirely unwelcome. I pushed it back down before it could turn into anything I'd have to think about later.

I was still on the front steps, staring up at more house than I could properly take in, when the car caught my eye.

Black sedan, parked across the street, engine running, windows tinted too dark to see through. It hadn't been there when we pulled up, I was almost certain of that.

"Rowan." I kept my voice low, tilted my chin toward it. "Is that yours?"

He followed my gaze. His hand, resting on the small of my back, pressed in slightly harder than it had a second before, the only tell he gave.

"No," he said. "It's not."

"Should I be worried about that?"

"No." Faster this time, already steering me toward the door. "Let's get you both inside."

I looked back once before I followed him in. The car hadn't moved.