We arrived at the law offices again and Danbury received us with a broad smile. We followed him to his office after we all shook hands. The offices weren’t spectacular. Everything was decorated in shades of brown. I hadn’t noticed it before—I had been too focused on what we had been trying to do. It looked pretty dull to me. I didn’t know how long I would last if I was surrounded by this all day.

“He wasn’t nearly this friendly when it was me and Camden,” Caden whispered.

“Maybe he likes you,” I offered.

Caden shook his head. “I think he likes you.”

I smiled. Danbury had been very agreeable when I had come with Caden yesterday. He had bought our story and he seemed to like us as a ‘couple.’ Our plan was working. Caden could get his money, and I felt pretty good about myself and the whole plan.

“Please, sit down,” Danbury said, when we were in the office. Caden and I sat down in the same chairs we had used before and I did the same thing, shifting my chair a little closer to Caden. I wanted to sell it. Danbury smiled when I moved the chair and sat down. Score.

“I must confess, the two of you are a great couple,” Danbury said, walking to his file cabinet in the corner. He unlocked the top drawer and opened it. “It’s not every day I come across couples that are so in love. It’s rare to see people who tolerate each other at all these days.”

I had to agree with Danbury on that. Relationships didn’t seem to mean as much as they used to. When I watched old movies from time to time it seemed that love used to be a novelty. Now it was synonymous with lust.

My mind flashed to the sex Caden and I enjoyed last night. But that wasn’t the same thing, I told myself. We had fucked but I hadn’t told him I loved him when all I’d really wanted was to have someone that would give it to me whenever I needed it.

I looked around the office. Danbury had no photos of family or plants or ornaments. This office could belong to anyone, or no one.

“You should see some of the couples that come in here,” Danbury continued, and I forced myself to pay attention to him. “I’m not allowed to discuss client details but it gets bad.”

Caden and I nodded, patiently listening to Danbury ramble while he retrieved the necessary paperwork for us. I didn’t care for his small talk, but it was all part of the game and if we had to sit here listening to Danbury’s chatter to get the cash, it was what we would do.

Caden glanced at me and I was sure he was thinking the same thing.

Danbury finally found his files and took them out of the cabinet, locking up the drawer again before he walked to the desk.

“I had this drawn up for you yesterday,” Danbury said. “You’re welcome to go through it at your leisure before you sign it, but I must ask that you don’t leave the office with the papers.”

We both nodded and Danbury handed the papers to me, first.

I started reading through the contract. A lot of it was legal jargon that I didn’t understand per se, but I could guess from the context what it meant. Once or twice I asked Danbury what a concept meant and he took the time to explain it to me in simple terms.

I flipped to the second page and started reading. When I reached the second paragraph, I frowned. I read it another time, to be sure.

The contract stipulated that in order to receive the money, we had to get married within thirty days.

Married.

My stomach dropped and I felt like I was going to vomit.

“Is everything alright?” Danbury asked. Maybe I was transparent.

“Perfectly fine,” I said, but my voice was breathy and I had a feeling Danbury didn’t believe me. And he would be right, I wasn’t alright at all. The plan had been to pretend to be engaged. There had been nothing about marriage and the time frame was ridiculous.

“Is this what Caden’s grandmother asked for in her will?” I asked Danbury.

He nodded. “We have taken the liberty to put it into legal terms, of course, but technically it is.”

I wondered how accurate that was but the contract had been drawn up. There was nothing I could say to argue.

“What’s wrong?” Caden asked me.

I swallowed hard, trying to keep it together. I wanted to run screaming from the room. I wanted to take back everything I had said about being Caden’s fake fiancée. Why the hell had we done this? But there wasn’t a way to get out of it now.

“Can I talk to you outside, please?” I asked.

Caden looked at me, his blue eyes icy and he looked worried. He had reason to be.

“We need a moment to talk,” Caden said to Danbury.

“Of course,” Danbury said. “Take all the time you need.”

I put the contract down on the desk in front of me and stood up, making a beeline for the door. When I was out in the corridor I tried to take deep breaths but that sinking feeling in my gut wouldn’t go away. I folded my arms across my chest. Caden joined me, closing the office door behind him.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

I shook my head. “This was a big mistake.”

“What are you talking about?”

I looked at him. I was about to tell him that I couldn’t do this, that I had allowed him to dream and now I was ripping that fantasy away from him again. But I couldn’t do this.

“The contract says we have to get married in thirty days if you’re going to get the money.”

Caden blinked at me and I watched the information sink in.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Caden shook his head. “That’s not how I understood it.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

We stood in silence for a moment.

“What now?” Caden asked.

I pulled up my shoulders. “I can’t do this. I can’t do marriage, Caden. I’m not ready for it and I definitely don’t want it to be like this. It’s supposed to be special.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Caden said, putting his hand on my arms, but I didn’t want him to touch me. I felt trapped, pushed into a corner and it was ridiculous because I was the one that had suggested this trip. I shook my head and stepped to the side trying to get away from Caden. When I was out of arm’s reach, Caden dropped his arms to his side and looked at me.

“We can’t figure it out. I thought it was about being engaged. Marriage is something else and I just can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

I turned around and walked away from Caden, leaving him to face Danbury by himself, to pick up the pieces. It was wrong of me but I felt like I was being crushed, like the walls of the building were closing in on me. I had to get out of there and out where I could breathe.

When I stepped outside the building I sucked air into my lungs as if I had been drowning. My stomach still turned and I felt horrible about what had happened, that I had come this far for it to be a dead end, and that I had walked out on Caden. But I didn’t do relationships and I sure as shit wasn’t going to do marriage. There was no way I would be able to go through with this. What the hell had I been thinking? I should have thought it through, should have found out more. But I had been keen for a change, something risky, a game.

I wondered if I should go back inside, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. Danbury believed we were this amazing couple and if we told him now that it was all fake, I didn’t want to be there to see the look on his face. I didn’t want to hear him tell Caden that his cousin was going to get the money.

After a while outside, Caden joined me.

“What did he say?” I asked.

Caden shook his head. “I didn’t tell him, if that’s what you’re asking. I told him you’re feeling sick, that you’ve been off all morning. It might be something you ate, he suggested. Traveling is always risky, right?”

“You didn’t tell him what was going on?”

“Not yet.”

What was Caden trying to do? I knew it was a lot of money but I couldn’t see a way out of this.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to go back to the hotel and dress up a little and then I’m going to take you out somewhere so we can forget about all of this. What do you think? We’re in California, we’re away from work. We should enjoy ourselves. This can wait. Let’s take our minds off it.”

I nodded. “That sounds great.”

“Good. We’ll reschedule with Danbury. He was very sympathetic about your condition.”

I chuckled. The only ‘condition’ I had was not wanting to be in a relationship. It wasn’t even about commitment issues. I was just a different person than most of the women out there.

We took a cab back to the hotel and did what Caden had suggested. We changed out of the clothes we had chosen for a lawyer’s meeting and into something more comfortable.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The only place in town that reminds me of my grandmother. I don’t have a lot of memories of her, but this one sticks.”

I hadn’t expected that. Caden wasn’t a family person or very sentimental. He seemed to be the type that went where the wind took him. But I nodded, happy to do something that would take my mind off the contract that Danbury had wanted me to sign today.

Hopefully, it would help. Even when I tried not to think about it and just enjoy my time in California like Caden suggested, my mind kept wandering back to that damn deadline. Thirty days. That was quick for any marriage to take place, even when both parties were completely in love and already engaged. To whip up a wedding in that time was impossible, so it would have to be at a courthouse.

I’d never been wildly romantic, but every girl dreams about her wedding day at least once in her life and I had always pictured mine to be a white wedding. It may have been simplified a lot over the years, but I hadn’t ever thought about marrying at a courthouse.

And that was just the wedding. The relationship itself scared me more than anything. There was no way I could pull through and commit to something like marriage, purely for the sake of Caden getting his money. No matter how good our intentions were.

I studied Caden while he put gel in his hair to mess it up and checked himself out in the mirror. He didn’t seem very upset about me walking out on him at the lawyer’s office, or about me feeling so negative about signing that contract. He was in his usual good mood. I wasn’t sure if it meant he didn’t care about the money, or if he was sure we could still get around it.

“Are you okay?” Caden asked me, looking at me in the mirror.

I nodded.

“You look like you’re deep in thought.”

I shrugged, “There’s not much to say about it, really.”

Caden smiled at me and turned around, looking directly at me instead of through the mirror. “Well, stop thinking. Tonight, we’re going to have fun.”

I was on board with that and when Caden held out his hand, I took it.