Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
This is ridiculous. I’m living in his house, and he’s thanking me?
“Before Suzanne died, she asked me to do something. She wanted me to make a difference in someone’s life. And I’ve been hearing her voice in my head, telling me to do it. So this is it. I want to do this for you, and I want to do this for her. I know this would make her happy. And even in death, her happiness matters to me. I think peace is what we find after we die. Happiness is how we experience love while we’re alive. She has peace. I need to seek happiness.”
I have no idea where he’s going with this. But if I die right now in the wake of Zach's words, I think I’d be good. Leaving this house won’t be easy because he’s felt like happiness, the kind I didn’t seek. The kind that just found me.
“I can do something for you. I want to do this for you. And someday I know you’ll pay it forward, and that will make me even happier.”
“What?”
He pulls in a long breath and lets it out as he drops his arms from the door frame. “I want to marry you.”
Record scratch. Brakes screeching. Thunk of a mic dropping.
He doesn’t let it sit unexplained in the air for long, but it feels like an eternity because the thoughts in my mind travel at the speed of light. And by the time he continues, I’ve already had a million thoughts and emotions paint a picture in my head.
“It will be temporary. No one will have to know. It will just be until you find a job with benefits or find someone else you want to marry for love. I have really good health insurance that would be yours. And you want to travel. Well … I can get you incredibly cheap tickets. You can visit every wonder of the world and take pictures until your heart’s content.”
After at least a hundred unanswered breaths, I whisper, “A fake marriage.”
“A legal marriage,” he corrects me.
“Suz—”
“She died,” he says. “But she would have wanted this for you.”
I’m too shocked to appease him with the ego-driven tangent he expects. Did Suzie tell him what she told me? Did she tell him about the looks she thought we were giving each other, even though I don’t recall any looks from either one of us? But he prefaced everything with “what I’m going to say is not about love.”
“You don’t have to decide now. Just … think about it.”
Answer? I can barely breathe or even blink, but I manage to scrounge a single nod.
“Okay. Sleep. I’ll check on you before I go to bed. You might feel hungry by then.” Zach closes the door behind him.
I used to envy Suzie, even with her terminal cancer. She married the most attentive man in the world. Loving and generous with every action. And I used to sleep in my car, in a Walmart parking lot, dreaming about what it would feel like to be married to a Zachary Hays or a clone of him. My dreams involved this clone coming home from work, loosening his tie, and smiling at me with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, the way he used to greet Suzie.
They were just dreams—innocent, unrealistic dreams. I never really imagined I could be his wife, yet that’s the offer on the table. But he won’t come home with flowers in his hand and look at me like I’m the brightest constellation in his sky. He’ll come home and treat me like his roommate. He’ll wonder how my search for a job with benefits is going. He’ll wonder if I’ve met a nice man to marry so he can release me and feel satisfied with his good deeds.
Me? I’ll spend every day wondering how I married the man of my dreams, though it will feel like the worst nightmare.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Not to brag, but over the next couple of days, I do a spectacular job of ignoring the ten-thousand-pound elephant in the room holding an invisible diamond ring. It’s invisible, of course, because the elephant is invisible and the proposal is fake, but the marriage would be … legal.
I’ll be twenty-four next month. Marriage was in my ten-year plan. Babies in my fifteen-year plan. Fake marriages rank about as high as anal sex. To be fair to Zach, he lubed it quite well. He’s made sure I know it will not involve love. No one will know. And it will only last until I find a job with health insurance or another husband. A real one—hopefully with health insurance as well.
“I work tomorrow. Do you want me to see if my mom or Aaron can stay with you?” Zach asks, squatted in front of me as he swaps out the bandages on my arms, neck, and face. The stitches come out in a few days. He’ll do Harry Pawter’s paws next. Poor thing is sick of his cone.