Page 7 of Promise To Marry You
“What?”
My eyes shut, but I’m all too aware of Beckett coming to stand beside me. I can sense him wringing his hands. Is it guilt? It better be guilt.
“This is your fault.” I stand up from the stool, my hand coming up to poke him in his hard chest. He stumbles back a step, taken by surprise. “I listened to you yesterday and didn’t go in to deal with Joseph, and now he’s fired me. I have no fucking job, no family, nothing.”
Beckett grabs my hand and pulls it away from where I’ve been jabbing his chest. “Hold on, Cam, you can’t blame me for your boss being a certified prick.”
I hear him, but I don’t care. I’m on a tear now. I grab the letter that’s resting on top of the box and wave it in his face. “You know who else is a prick? My grandfather. He is. Because what kind of man says he loves me, then leaves me with fuck all, unless I do the one thing I swore I would never do. Who does that to someone?”
Beckett’s face shows his confusion, so I push the letter at him, then pivot on my heel and walk into the kitchen. I yank open the fridge and stare at the contents inside, not looking for anything in particular, just needing my focus to be somewhere other than on Beckett as he reads the letter.
“Cam, we can fix this. I can fix this.”
I whirl around to face him. “What the fuck does that mean, Beck? Fix what? Fix my grandfather dying, or me losing my job, or him insisting I have to be fuckingmarriedto get the money he’s left me. None of that can be fixed. He’s dead, my job is gone, and the money will never be mine.”
“Marry me.”
A loud snort escapes me at those two asinine words said so calmly and confidently he almost has me fooled. “You’re shitting me. Come on, Beckett. I don’t do marriage, you know that. Grandpa knew that, too, which means this is some cruel, stupid joke he’s playing. Well, guess what? I’m not playing!” My voice has risen so that I’m basically shouting, and I know it’s just a matter of time before Mrs. Sincero across the hall comes and pounds on my door to tell me to be quiet. But I don’t give a flying fuck right now.
“This isn’t a game, Cam. It’s insane, yes, but it’s not impossible. Let me help. I promise, I can fix this.”
I turn wild eyes on Beckett, the man I thought I could trust to be reasonable, practical, and most of all — on my side. “Forget it. This whole shit show is pure madness. You can’t marry me. I’ll just ignore the money. It doesn’t have to even exist. It can go wherever unused inheritances or trusts or whatever the fuck it is go.” I gulp in some air, willing my heart rate to slow down from the wild pace it’s currently pounding out.
He takes a step toward me, but I take two steps back, lifting my hands up.
“I need some space, Beckett.”
He freezes and nods. And I take the opportunity to leave my apartment, the letter, all of it behind.
On autopilot, I find myself back at the cemetery where just yesterday we lowered my grandfather into the ground. Next to his fresh plot lies two more — my parents.
Keeping my eyes trained on their headstones, I sink to the ground. “What the hell am I meant to do now?”
There’s no answer, save for the chirping of a bird in a tree. It’s poetic, I guess, since there is no answer — at least not one I can bring myself to accept — to the mess I’m in.
I have no job, but I do have some savings. I could take what I get from the sale of Grandpa’s house and anything else not tied up in his ridiculous marriage clause and go. Where, I don’t know, but somewhere far away from here.
I lean back against my mom’s headstone, my fingers trailing through the grass. In a couple of months, it’ll be the anniversary of their deaths. I wonder who will place the bouquet of my mom’s favourite dahlias at their grave now that Grandpa’s gone.
I guess I’ll have to do it. There’s no one else.
My eyes close, and I try to focus on some deep meditative breathing. But instead of calm, all I feel is loss. Emptiness. Grief.
Chapter four
Beckett
The cab I’m in seems to take forever to bring me back to the cemetery in the nearby city of Brandon, where I rightfully guessed I would find Cam. She’s sitting on the ground, leaning against her mother’s headstone with her eyes closed, the fresh dirt of her grandfather’s grave next to her.
A slight frown is on her face, and the tension lining her brow makes me sigh. This fucking sucks knowing she’s in pain and knowing she won’t let me do the one thing Icoulddo to help.
Is it crazy to offer to marry her? Yeah, it is.
Do I regret making the offer? Not at all.
It’s got nothing to do with how I feel about her, now or in the past. It’s the only logical solution to the impossible predicament Wilbert put her in. I feel a sliver of guilt that I urged her not to go into work and that was the final straw causing her to lose her job. But at the end of the day, she deserves more than a boss who would do that, anyway.
We could get married. It’s a piece of paper, that’s all it has to be. But that piece of paper can solve everything.
