Wedding Game: He Picked My Best Friend I Walked Down the Aisle with His Enemy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Heath agrees to marry her on Saturday and sets the terms. Tucker pounds on the suite door at three in the morning.

Heath didn't laugh.

He looked at me for a long moment, then shut his laptop and stood up.

"Not here," he said. "Tucker's friends will be down in the lobby inside the hour."

"I'm not going up to a hotel room with you."

"It's my apartment. Thirtieth floor, and a night staff who answer to me." He picked up his water glass. "You can leave the door open."

I followed him.

The elevator opened straight into a long room with grey couches and a view of the whole shoreline.

Nothing in it looked used.

He took off his jacket and hung it over a chair, and I saw the scar on his left forearm, the shiny patch of old burn from wrist to elbow.

I remembered it, though I'd have sworn I didn't.

"Sit," he said. "Please."

I sat on the edge of a couch with my coat on.

"Say it plainly," Heath said. "I want to be sure I heard it."

"Tucker just walked off with my best friend in front of forty people. Everything for Saturday week is paid for. Two hundred seats, a florist, my grandmother's dress." I held my hands flat on my knees so they would stop shaking. "I want to walk down that aisle anyway. With you at the end of it."

"A husband you can use."

"A husband I can use," I said. "For as long as it takes."

"And what is it you want out of it?"

"His face," I said. "I want to see his face when I walk in."

Heath nodded slowly.

"That's honest." He sat down across from me. "Here is my reason, so you don't have to guess. Tucker has been waiting eight years for me to lose something. I would like to take something from him in front of everyone he knows."

It stung more than I expected.

"So I'm a weapon."

"You're a bride who is leaving him. That's all he'll see." His grey eyes didn't move off my face. "I'll say yes. I have terms."

"I'm a teacher. I love terms."

For the first time, one corner of his mouth moved.

"One. A year, then a quiet divorce. No fight, no money changing hands."

"Fine."

"Two. Separate bedrooms. There are four in this apartment."

"Fine."

"Three. We touch only when someone is watching."

I held his eyes.

"Fine."

"Four." He paused. "Nobody asks about the summer you were twenty. Not me, not you. That summer stays shut."

The room got very quiet.

"You don't get to say that," I said, "after the way it ended."

"Those are my terms."

"Then I have two," I said. "I keep my job and my own money. I don't take a dollar from you for anything. And nobody makes me smaller, not Tucker, not his mother, and not you."

"Agreed." He didn't hesitate. "I pay for the venue. It was my idea, so the bill is mine."

"The venue is booked at the old club on Michigan."

"By Saturday it'll be booked here." He nodded at the floor. "My ballroom is on the second level. It seats three hundred, and the florist can move."

"You can't change a wedding in nine days."

"I can change anything in my own building."

He said it flatly, as a plain fact.

My phone buzzed on the cushion.

I turned it over.

There were fourteen missed calls from Tucker, and three new texts.

The first said, Addie where are you.

The second said, You're being insane, come back up.

The third was from Mallory.

It said, Please text me that you're safe. Tucker is losing it. I'm so sorry, I never meant for it to look like that.

I stared at it.

Mallory had been sitting beside me in the second row of every school play since I was nine.

I typed, I'm safe, and then I deleted it and put the phone face down.

"Don't answer," Heath said.

"I wasn't going to."

"You were halfway through typing."

"I was typing the word no."

"No what?"

"Just no," I said. "I haven't decided the rest."

He looked at my left hand, bare on my knee.

"There's a license office downtown. I can have the paperwork on Friday. I know a judge who owes me a favor."

"Heath."

"Yes."

It was the first time I'd said his name out loud in eight years.

I'd meant to say something sharp.

What came out was, "Thank you for not asking me what happened up there."

"I watched the security feed for a minute." His voice stayed even, but his jaw didn't. "I didn't need to ask."

He stood and went to the kitchen, and I heard a cabinet open.

When he came back he set a mug of tea on the table beside me.

"Third bedroom on the left," he said. "Towels are in the closet."

I took the mug in both hands.

It was nearly three in the morning, and I had given a man I hadn't spoken to in eight years the one thing Tucker couldn't take from me.

Behind us, the elevator chimed.

Then a fist hit the apartment door, hard enough to rattle it.

"Addie!" It was Tucker. "I know you're in there! My phone says you're on thirty!"

A softer voice came after his, thin and wet.

"Addie, please," Mallory said. "Please just talk to us."

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