Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Now that Nancy knows, I guess we just need to get a license. Then figure out the courthouse thing. And also a location for pictures. A couple of weeks?”
“The sooner, the better, right?”
“Yeah. But it has to be believable too.”
“We could just claim we got swept up. After the drug test, we just happened upon the dress, and then once we had the dress, we saw no reason to drag it out.”
“She already thinks we are being foolish and moving too fast. So she probably wouldn’t think it’s too crazy.”
“And once we’re married, I can finally make good on my side of this bargain.”
Something about the way she said that had me sitting there with one question rolling around in my mind.
What, exactly, was she getting out of this?
Something told me it had very little to do with the house and the money.
She was keeping her true motivation from me.
And I couldn’t help but wonder if I would ever figure it out.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tessa
I suddenly had a newfound respect for the women who carefully planned and executed big, grand, over-the-top weddings full of guests and the expectations from them that came with the price of a wedding gift.
Honestly, I was even ready to give those so-called ‘bridezillas’ a pass.
Because, holy hell, even our silly little fake courthouse wedding required so much attention to detail and forethought.
The dress, the suit, the rings, the shoes, my hair, my makeup, the license, the photographer, picture locations, and even what the hell we were going to do after the wedding. Because normal couples didn’t just go home, change out of their fancy clothes, and eat diner takeout on their wedding night.
That said, Rook was extremely limited in where he was allowed to go.
In the end, after many a stolen conversation when I was not actively avoiding Rook, we ended up on a fancy outdoor picnic at dusk on one of the farms at the corner of Shady Valley.
We found a company that specialized in setting up outdoor “cozy” parties.
I’d fallen in love with their social media posts where gorgeous strung Edison lights surrounded the main area—be it tables or thick blankets on the ground—their grazing boards, and, well, their prices.
I’d done the mental math on how much Rook had spent on this sham of a wedding. Then I’d quickly decided that “least expensive” was the best bet for the intimate wedding party-for-two we were going to have.
I knew that, to Rook, access to his mother was priceless. But I couldn’t help but worry about how much he was spending on me, on us. Money troubles had simply always been a running concern in my life.
To be more specific, the money troubles of the adults around me were a running concern for me. Anytime someone had to spend money on me, they did so grudgingly. And it almost always came with a lecture. If not punishment. Even for something as simple as growing out of my clothes or wearing through the soles of my shoes.
So no matter how many times Rook assured me that the money was no concern, I couldn’t help but worry about it.
I’d even tried to convince him that we could just use the tripod again for the pictures. But he’d put his foot down about that, claiming we needed a photographer to make it all seem legit.
Since it wasn’t my money, I couldn’t exactly say no.
Though I had tried to offer to pitch in. Even if the idea of losing any of the money I’d been socking away gave me a stomachache.
That was the one perk to trying to be around Rook as little as possible—I had more savings than I’d expected to have so soon in this whole process.
Maybe it was immature of me to be avoiding Rook. But when we were close, it was getting harder and harder to fight my feelings and keep my walls intact.
I mean, I’d told him about how my mom had basically sold me to a club president.
That was a story I’d never told anyone before. Sure, I’d softened the story around the edges, leaving out my terror and disgust, about how hard my hands had been shaking, about how I’d been sure I hadn’t drugged the man enough, that he was moments away from grabbing me, stripping me, and pinning me down.
And while I’d seen every sex act imaginable between couples and groups at that point, I’d yet to know a man intimately myself. Which just made it all the more terrifying.
I hadn’t told him what it was like after that incident, about how I’d taken to sleeping in the crawl space in the basement with the spiders, pulling old, dusty boxes in close to hide me, terrified that the president might want a ‘repeat’ of our night together.
And I hadn’t told him about how my relationship with my mother was never the same, about how I no longer went out of my way to help her. To give her clean urine. To make sure she hadn’t passed out on her back.