The Contract Wife novel · Chapter 2 of 5

Chapter 2: Winter Light

Ava reads the contract on the hospital roof in bright daylight, then in front of the ER staff at the break table says her terms: she keeps her job and her choices. Damien agrees to two of three. She signs.

I take the folder and walk away from him.

Down the corridor, past the vending machines, through the stairwell door.

Six flights, and my legs don't feel like mine.

The roof door is propped with a brick because the latch has been broken since August.

Outside, the air hits me like a wall.

It's February and the sun is out, hard and white, cutting across the wet rooftops.

I sit on the vent housing and open the folder on my knees.

Forty-one pages.

I read all of them.

Clause four says I move into his residence within three days.

Clause nine says I attend events as required by his office.

Clause twelve says neither party will make any claim on the other's assets.

Clause twenty-two says either party may terminate with thirty days notice, and if I terminate, the debt stands.

Clause thirty-one says the marriage is dissolved at twelve months and the balance is forgiven in full.

There's a line near the bottom I have to read three times.

*The second party will maintain separate quarters.*

He wrote that in himself. It's the only clause with no legal language around it.

I sit there with the wind pulling at my scrubs and I laugh once, out loud, at nothing.

Then the door opens behind me.

"You read fast," he says.

"Get off my roof."

"It's the hospital's roof."

"Then get off the hospital's roof."

He doesn't.

He stands near the door with his hands at his sides, and the sunlight makes him look younger and worse.

"I have three things," I say.

"Say them."

"One. I keep my job. I work my shifts, I don't quit, I don't cut back. Nobody at this hospital finds out I'm married to you unless I say so."

"You're asking me to hide."

"I'm asking you to stay out of my life."

He's quiet for a second.

"Agreed."

"Two. I keep my choices. Where I go, who I see, what I do with my days. You don't manage me like a line item."

His mouth tightens.

"That's not how I'd put it."

"I know it isn't."

"Agreed," he says. "With one exception. If I tell you a place isn't safe, you listen."

"That's not an exception. That's a third thing."

"It's part of the second."

"Three," I say, and stand up. "Lily never signs anything. Not one paper, not one form, not one thank-you note with her name on it. Her surgery is paid and she owes you nothing, and she never finds out what this costs me."

He looks at me for a long moment.

"No," he says.

"Then we're done."

"She has to know the marriage is real."

"It's not real."

"It's real on paper, and she's going to be in a hospital bed asking her sister why there's a ring on her hand." He steps closer. "I won't make her sign anything. But I won't lie to a nineteen-year-old about the one person in her life who's still standing."

"She's the whole reason I'm doing this."

"I know."

"You don't know anything about her."

"I know her surgery is Monday and her sister is standing on a roof arguing instead of signing."

The wind takes that one and throws it off the building.

I hate him.

I hate that he's right more than I hate him.

"Then you tell her yourself," I say. "And you tell her it was my decision, and you don't make it sound like a rescue."

"Agreed."

"Say it back to me."

He blinks.

"Say what back?"

"All of it. Out loud. So I know you heard it."

He does.

He stands there in his two-thousand-dollar suit and repeats my three things back to me, one at a time, in order, without adding anything.

When he finishes, I believe him.

That's the part that scares me.

We take the stairs down.

At the break room door he stops.

"Your terms. In front of your coworkers?"

"You watched me get cornered at my own station," I say. "Now they watch me walk out of it."

I push the door open.

The break room is full.

Dana at the table with her coffee. Two nurses from nights. A resident eating a sandwich over the sink.

The mother from bed six is standing by the vending machine with her son, holding a paper cup.

They all go still.

I walk to the table and set the folder down flat.

"This is Damien Kastar," I say. "He owns my family's debt. He's offered me a contract. One year, marriage on paper, and my sister's surgery is paid."

Nobody breathes.

"He's agreed I keep my job, I keep my own decisions, and Lily signs nothing." I look up at him. "Say it."

"I've agreed," he says, to the room.

Dana sets her coffee down slowly.

"Ava," she says. "You can't be serious."

"I'm serious."

"This is insane. You're a nurse, not a, " She stops herself.

"Say the rest," I say.

She doesn't.

The mother from bed six steps forward.

"I don't know what this is," she says. "But I watched you bring my husband back this morning. You don't owe anybody an explanation for how you keep your family alive."

"Thank you," I say.

She nods and takes her son out.

I uncap the pen.

My hand is steady, which surprises me.

I write AVA SINCLAIR on the line at the bottom of page forty-one, and then the date, and then I close the folder.

He picks it up and doesn't look at it.

"Is it done?" I ask.

"It's done."

"Then get out of my hospital."

He puts the folder inside his jacket and turns for the door.

Then he stops with his hand on the frame.

"My driver will bring your mother to the courthouse in an hour," he says.

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