He Married His Hometown Neighbor, Then Begged for a Second Chance novel · Chapter 1 of 40
Chapter 1: The Clause
In a small-town courthouse, with two board members watching, Evan marries Ethan Ross so Ethan can claim his parents' company; Ethan calls it a clause, Evan adds one condition and signs, and his hidden phone shows that someone is already inside Ross Group's network.
Two board members of a billion-dollar company sat in the front row of the county courthouse and watched Evan Green get married.
Evan had expected the clerk, and the man he was marrying, and his grandmother in her church coat.
He had not expected an audience in good suits.
The older board member kept checking his watch.
The younger one kept checking Evan, from his shoes up to his borrowed tie.
The clerk's computer froze while she was typing the license.
She tapped the keys. She tapped them harder. The screen stayed blue.
"It does this," she said. "Give it ten minutes."
"May I?" Evan said.
He came around the counter, pulled one grey cable out of the back of the tower and pushed it in again.
He typed four lines into a window she hadn't known was there.
The registry came back.
"It just needed a restart," he said.
"Well, bless you," the clerk said, and went on typing.
Nobody else in the room had noticed.
Evan touched the inside pocket of his jacket, where his second phone sat in its cracked case, and checked that it was still there.
He checked again a minute later.
"There you are," said a warm voice behind him.
A woman had come in from the hall with a white carnation in her hand.
She was thirty, in a cream blazer that had never been near a courthouse, and her name was Maya.
She was the groom's oldest friend and the VP of Technology at Ross Group.
"Hold still," she said, and pinned the flower to his lapel herself.
Her fingers were quick and kind.
"I'm so glad it's someone from home," she said. "Ethan needs home right now. He's been living on coffee and boardrooms since the funeral."
"I'll feed him," Evan said.
"Please do." She laughed. "What do you do again? Ethan said computers."
"I fix them. Mostly for people in town."
"Practical. I love that." She patted the carnation flat. "I'll set up your access at the company myself. That way nobody on my team gets curious about you."
It was a thoughtful thing to say.
Evan thanked her.
Across the room his grandmother was fussing with her purse, and Ethan stood by the window with his back to everyone.
Ethan Ross was twenty-eight years old and had grown up in the house next door.
He was tall, with black hair and grey eyes, and he wore a charcoal suit that fit him exactly.
Seven months ago his parents had died on a wet road outside Bayport, and they had left a will that said one thing about the company they built.
Ethan could be chair of Ross Group only if he was married before the board to Evan Green, and stayed married for a year.
The lawyer's letter had been three lines long.
Ethan had stood in the doorway of Evan's grandmother's kitchen with that letter in his hand.
He had not looked at Evan.
He had said, "Please."
Evan had never heard him say it in all the years they'd lived next door.
That was the whole reason Evan was standing here in a borrowed tie.
"Mr. Ross, Mr. Green," the clerk said. "Shall we?"
They stood in front of her desk, a foot apart.
Her vows took four minutes.
Evan said, "I do," and heard his own voice come out steady.
Ethan said it a half second after, and his jaw was tight.
The ring Ethan slid onto Evan's finger was a plain steel band that had been in a velvet bag.
The one Evan put on Ethan's finger was identical.
"By the power vested in me," the clerk began.
His grandmother was already crying.
The clerk said the last words, and Ethan did not lean in.
He nodded once, and shook Evan's hand.
The board members clapped.
The older one came forward first, beaming, and took Ethan's hand in both of his.
"Congratulations, Ethan. Your father would have been so proud. You must be very happy."
"It's the clause," Ethan said. "Don't read more into it."
He said it pleasantly, in the voice he used on a bank.
The older man laughed uncertainly.
The younger one looked at his shoes.
Evan stood still with the carnation on his lapel and the ring on his finger and heard it all the way through.
His grandmother had heard too.
Her hand closed on his sleeve, hard.
"Go on," Evan told her gently. "It's all right."
It wasn't.
But Maya was already steering the board members toward the cake from the bakery on Main Street, laughing, and the room moved on.
Ethan crossed to him and held out a folded paper.
"The agreement," he said. "It's what we discussed."
It was one page.
They were married for twelve months. After that, either of them could end it with a signature and no claim on the other.
They would have separate bedrooms.
It was signed already, in Ethan's tidy black hand.
Evan read it twice.
Then he took the pen from the clerk's desk and wrote a third line at the bottom, in the margin, in his own cramped printing.
No questions about each other's private life.
Ethan read it upside down.
"That's strange," he said. "What private life?"
"Whatever I have. And whatever you have."
"I don't have one."
"Then it costs you nothing."
For a moment Ethan studied him, and his brows came together.
Then he shrugged and initialed the margin.
"Fine," he said. "You'll be bored in a week."
Evan signed his name under the line.
So he signed.
His grandmother hugged him in the parking lot with her whole thin body.
She turned and pointed a finger at Ethan, who had been about to get into the black car.
"Ethan Ross," she said. "You hurt that boy and I will know."
"Yes, ma'am," Ethan said.
For a second he looked ten years old.
Then the car door shut and he was an adult in a suit again.
Maya waved from the back seat of the second car.
"See you at the tower on Monday, Evan!"
Evan lifted his hand.
He walked his grandmother to her bus, kissed her cheek, and watched until it turned the corner.
Then he stood alone in the courthouse lot, between the black cars and the flagpole, and took out the second phone.
A red line was flashing on its screen.
It was an alert he had set up years ago and half forgotten, one that watched the biggest firewalls in the world.
He read the first line, then the second.
Someone had gotten into Ross Group's network.
Not today. The earliest entry was nine weeks old, and the intruder had been quietly reading ever since.
The firewall that every board member had just toasted with cake was called Absolute SSS, and the whole world believed it could not be crossed.
Behind Evan, in the car, Ethan was telling the driver to hurry.
Evan put the phone away.
He was the only person at the wedding who knew.
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