Chapter 7: Jessica - Forced Marriage to the CEO

Jessica

I wake up way before my alarm. Sleep has evaded me because I can’t help but replay in my mind the crazy turn my life has taken. Jonathan Atwell, one of Boston’s most eligible bachelors, and incredibly easy on the eyes I might add, asked me to marry him for a business outcome. And my answer was yes.

I lie there a while longer, staring at Jonathan’s ceiling. I guess by tonight, it will be legally Jessica Atwell. The wedding is going to be held today at the courthouse. The sooner for the clause the better so it was arranged quickly. The wedding reception is another matter. I run through everything Claire flagged in the agreement one more time even though I’ve already memorized it. the careful architecture I built to keep myself protected, and none of it explains why my breath still catches every time I think about how commanding he sounded when he said I’ll handle it, like he meant it as a promise.

I get up before I let myself examine that any further.

* * *

Darnell finds me in the break room before I’ve finished my coffee. I can tell by the look on his face he already knows.

“So.” He leans against the counter, arms crossed, waiting me out.

“So.”

“You’re marrying Jonathan Atwell.” It sounds like a statement, not a question.

“I’m marrying Jonathan Atwell.”

It turns out it was a question and he’s thrown that I answered in the affirmative. He’s quiet for a second longer than I expect from him. Darnell, who has an immediate opinion on everything just stares. Then, finally: “Okay.”

“That’s it? Okay?”

“I’m processing.” He studies me like a donor he can’t quite read yet. “You seem calm.”

“I’m handling it.”

“That’s not the same thing.” He pushes off the counter, and for a second I think he’s going to push harder, ask the real question underneath the polite one. He doesn’t. “Whatever you need from me on this, cover, silence, an alibi if your father calls asking why he had to hear it from someone else, you’ve got it.”

I smile at the last part and say, “Thank you.”

“I still think you’re insane.” He says it lightly, but there’s something steady underneath it, the steady loyalty of someone who’s watched me survive worse than this. “But you’ve never once made a decision I didn’t eventually understand. I’ll trust this one too. Eventually.”

It’s as close to a blessing as I’m going to get from anyone in my life today, and I take it.

* * *

The judge’s chambers are on the fourth floor of a building that is quiet as new fallen snow. Claire and I automatically talk in whispers.

I’ve never been inside a room like this before. I’ve never attended depositions or compliance hearings, that would put me in this institutional architecture Jonathan probably moves through regularly. I’m aware of every sound my heels make on the floor, aware of the deep blue dress I chose because it was the only thing in my closet that didn’t feel like armor. Most of all, I’m aware of him already standing there when I arrive, in a suit that looks pressed within the hour.

He watches me the whole way across the room. I hold his eyes because looking away makes me feel like a coward and I want to show him I’m in this with him.

When I am finally facing him, I notice that someone has added decorations and flowers to make our wedding feel a bit more festive, and a little less institutional. Then I see the photographer and remember we will need wedding pictures to accompany our marriage announcement when it hits the media.

I give him a tentative smile, and he responds with a small nod and the same intense gaze I saw the first night we met. Neither of us says anything. The judge starts.

It takes all of eleven minutes for the proceedings to take place. I say what I’m asked to say, and some of it, standing here, doesn’t feel perfunctory the way I expected it to. When the judge pronounces us married, I look at Jonathan and he looks at me, and something settles between us, wordless. We pull in for a light, chaste kiss, then we shake the judge’s hand. Jonathan’s assistant witnesses for him and Claire witnesses for me. The paperwork is signed and a few obligatory pictures are captured for the event.

Outside on the sidewalk, in the November cold, we stand for a moment.

“All right,” I say.

“All right,” he says in return.

And just like that, our marriage becomes a calendar entry in the middle of a workday. He goes back to his labs while I go back to Anchor Point. His communications lead releases a statement at noon, factual and brief. The press will do what the press does.

I work through the afternoon. I do not think about the way he looked at me in that room, steadier than I expected, as if the eleven minutes held weight for him too.

* * *

The penthouse is empty when I let myself in that evening. He told me his meetings run long, always will, I’m learning that already. But there’s a single flower on the kitchen counter. Deep blue, the color of the dress I wore that morning. No vase. No note.

I put it in water, and don’t examine too closely why I want it to last.

Just when I’m about to order take-out, I get a text

Him: Running late. Meetings. There’s food in the fridge if you want it.

Her: Found it. Thanks for the food. How did you know?

(A longer pause than usual.)

Him: I pay attention.

Her: That’s either thoughtful or unsettling.

Him: Possibly both.

* * *

It’s been two weeks since the wedding. And much to my surprise—and quiet, reluctant delight—Jonathan has found time to communicate more than I expected. Short messages. A late-night call once when neither of us could sleep. The occasional dry observation about something that happened in his day that somehow made me smile at my phone like an idiot. We have settled into each other’s space with an ease that still startles me. He makes coffee the way I like it without asking. I leave the second bathroom light on because he hates walking into a dark room at two in the morning. Small, ordinary things that should not feel this natural under a contract.

The reception is tonight because the wedding itself had been nothing more than a signature and witnesses in a judge’s chamber. But Jonathan’s position in Boston made a full reception inevitable. He simply agreed to let me plan it exactly the way I wanted. Luckily, my second venue choice had a last minute cancellation so I was able to secure it for tonight.

I spent most of the two weeks resurrecting the masked-ball vision my father had once rejected. Money and the Atwell name made the vendors remarkably cooperative. Half the guest list consisted of donors, board members and Anchor Point staff that regularly attend galas so the only thing that changed was the date.

The morning of the ball I’m at the Gardner by seven, going through the checklist for the fourth time even though nothing on it has changed. My father wanted a dinner at the Four Seasons. Gerald Shaw’s version of a wedding celebration is a transaction in formal clothes. I’m giving him the masked ball I always wanted instead. Tonight nobody’s name will matter more than anybody else’s. My father has no idea what’s waiting for him tonight. Neither, I think, does Jonathan.

I call Darnell, who’s handling the Anchor Point side of the guest list, and he tells me, for the third time, that everyone’s confirmed, that I can stop asking.

“You’re allowed to be excited,” he says. “It’s your wedding reception.”

“It’s a logistics event with a ceremony attached.”

“Uh-huh.” I can hear him smiling through the phone. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Somewhere between the final seating adjustments and the florist’s last delivery, I catch myself wondering what Jonathan will make of all this, whether a man who reads Q3 outcome reports for fun will walk in and see exactly what I wanted this to be or just see an expensive party standing between him and the next thing on his calendar.

I don’t know which answer I’m bracing for. I only know I want it to be the first one more than I’ve wanted anything to matter to a man in longer than I can remember. But I can’t let myself worry about that question for too long. There’s too much left to do.

* * *

By six the courtyard has transformed from the idea in my head for over a year to reality. But I don’t have time to stand still and look at it, which might be the only honest tragedy of the whole evening.

I’m checking place cards when the first guests arrive. I’m greeting Mrs. Aldrich, who has a white mask with gold at the edges already in place, and complimenting her on the color of it, when a caseworker from Anchor Point catches my elbow to ask where the coat check has moved to. I’m checking whether the quartet’s lead violinist needs anything, when Claire pulls me aside to marvel at the setting of this reception. For once she is not straight talking about logistics. And I’m quite taken back by her praise. I’m doing four things at once, my head on a swivel, when I see him.

He’s just inside the courtyard arch, not yet aware I’m looking, mask still in his hand rather than on his face, taking the whole room in with an expression I can’t read from this distance. His tux is immaculate, the custom fit cutting clean across his sculpted shoulders, making him look dangerously handsome. He is, without exception, the most devastating thing in this room, and I built this room to be devastating. For one unguarded second, I let myself just look, to take in the line of his jaw in low light, and the focus in his eyes as he is standing still doing nothing. I realize that some part of me has been waiting all day, underneath the florist and the quartet and the seating chart, just to see this exact moment happen. He doesn’t see me yet.

A hand closes around my arm. One of the museum’s event coordinators, murmuring something urgent about the east room and a delivery that’s arrived at the wrong entrance. I’m moving again before I’ve had time to decide whether I wanted to be found first or to find him. I go handle the delivery. I don’t look back at the arch, though it’s a struggle not to. I have so much still to do that cannot wait but I was able to catch his first unguarded moment at my creation and that look will stay with me for the rest of the evening. Maybe longer…