Marry Me Now: An Arranged Marriage Collection

by Wylder, Penny

  Under all my fear and worries, there’s an undercurrent of emotion I can’t ignore. An undercurrent of… happiness. Because that’s how I feel when I’m with John. And if that’s how I feel with him, just the two of us, then how much happier will I feel when it’s three of us? When we have a family. When our marriage becomes indisputably, permanently, real.

  Finally, the right words come to me. I pull the card out and prop it on the dashboard, starting to write.

  I lay it all out. How I feel about him, which came out of nowhere, as unexpected as the wild night that led to our marriage. And I end with how I’m feeling now—like this could be the same situation. Something wild and unexpected… but right. Something that could improve both our lives, as long as we keep our priorities straight. As long as we’re both all in.

  When I finish, signing it feels wrong. So I draw something instead. It’s been a while since I’ve set ink to paper—I used to sketch out all my set designs in detail before I worked on them, but nowadays I work from computer renderings instead. Still, it comes back to me easily enough, with the pen in my hand.

  I draw John, the way I remember him best. Lying beside me in bed, his dark eyes steady and fixed on mine. Reassuring me that whatever happens, he’ll be here for me.

  Just like I’ll be here for him, no matter what happens now. No matter where this news takes the two of us in life.

  When I’m finished, I leave the card sitting open on my dashboard and root around for the card’s envelope. When I find it, I tuck it inside and write on the front in swirling script, John’s name. Then I grab my purse and move to climb out of my car, only to let out a gasp of surprise.

  Bianca is standing outside my car, her eyes huge and round with shock, fixed on me.

  No. Fixed on the card in my hand.

  She moves back as I shove open my door and climb out of the car. I expect her to run away, the way she’s been doing around me ever since the night she hit on John. But she stands her ground, to my surprise, and fixes her attention on the envelope in my hand instead. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry, but I was walking past, and I saw you… you seemed a little ill, so I came to check…” But she doesn’t meet my gaze. She just stares at the envelope in my hand, with John’s name on the front. “Did I read that right?” she asks. “Are you pregnant?”

  The fear and worry I’ve been battling all day turn to jagged rocks in my stomach. I press the card over my heart, like that can shield me. “What do you want?” I snap.

  Her cheeks flush. “I wanted to apologize,” she says, and it’s so far from what I expected that my eyebrows shoot upward.

  “What?”

  She clears her throat, and finally, finally, drags her eyes up to meet mine. “I’m sorry. About what happened with John and me. I’m sure he told you; I was just so embarrassed about it all… I thought he was flirting with me; clearly, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have made a move.” Her eyes drift to the envelope again. “Do you need anything? Can I help somehow?”

  But I shake my head, moving away from her. She may have apologized for hitting on John—for misreading his signals, supposedly—but that doesn’t change the fact that she hit on him after she found out he and I were married. Even if our marriage was a sham, where is the respect in that?

  And then there’s the last week at work. A whole week where she ignored me, refused to even acknowledge anything had happened. And now she wants to apologize and act like everything is fine… why? Because she found out I’m pregnant? Because she pities me? “I’m fine,” I say coldly, turning toward the building.

  “Good luck,” she calls behind me, but I know her well enough to hear the catch in her tone. The insincerity.

  Screw her. Screw her advice, her telling me that everyone at Pitfire thinks I married John for this job. They don’t know anything, and neither does she.

  Back in the building, I tuck the card into my purse, planning to give it to John later tonight. Once everyone else clears out of the building. For now, I have work to do, and thanks to my much longer than usual morning break at the pharmacy, I’ll be playing catch-up.

  I bypass the workshop for once and head straight into the theater. We’ve been hard at work creating all the pieces for this play, but this week, we’ll be starting to actually assemble the stage itself. It’s an exciting step, usually my favorite part of set design. It’s when all the pieces you’ve labored on so much, all the disparate puzzle pieces stacked up inside your head, finally join together on stage into something that starts to resemble a real theater. It’s when your imagination finally gets to come to life.

  But today, I’m distracted. I force a smile and a wave for Daniel, and chat to a few of our stage hands about the order of setup. I want to get the background design right first, before we start adding the smaller set pieces to it. There’s one in particular, a moving set piece, that I’m worried about making fit. It needs to be suspended over the stage on wires, but accessible, because at one part of the play, toward the end of the second act, it needs to be able to move—to swing into the set, and be sturdy enough for one of the actors to climb onto it. It’s supposed to look like a series of stars in the night sky, at least until it swings down and reveals itself to be a chariot made out of shooting stars.

  It’ll be the trickiest part of our design, but I have faith we can pull it off.

  I leave a couple stage hands, overseen by Daniel, in charge of getting that whole thing hooked into the strap and pulley system we designed to hoist it up. We’ll test it a couple of times, before we hoist it all the way into position.

  In the meantime, I get started helping some other employees prop up the background itself. When I get in, they’re already halfway done hanging the various deer antler designs John and I sculpted by hand onto what will become the back wall of the cabin where most of the first act takes place.

  My heart skips a little, touching those pieces again. Remembering the way John’s hands cupped the clay around mine, the way he shaped them alongside me… And the way he pushed them aside to run his hands over me afterward, until it felt like he was sculpting me too, tracing my body until it became real, as molded as the clay we’d been working with.

  I’m lost in memories of that, of his hands over mine, guiding mine, or letting me guide him, both in equal measure, when I hear raised voices. I finish attaching the set of antlers I’d been working on to its place on the back wall of the “cabin,” and then turn to spot Bianca passing out the usual round of afternoon coffees to the crew. I hadn’t seen her do this in a while. It makes me pause, uncertain.

  Maybe I was being too harsh on her earlier, ignoring her olive branch of an apology. But I just don’t trust her. Not after everything she did.

  I’m about to turn away, back to my work, when I hear a shout, from the opposite side of the stage this time. I whip around and spot Daniel barking angry orders at one of the guys he was supervising. The guy is swearing, grabbing at a rope… My eyes trace the rope up, widening with every foot they travel into the rafters.

  Oh, shit.

  They hoisted the chariot already. Even though I told them to be sure to only test it a few feet off the ground first. To judge by Daniel’s cursing, he didn’t order this either. But there’s no time to worry about whose fault it is, because when my eyes trace the trajectory of the chariot, I realize what’s about to happen.

  The ropes it’s tied to are fraying. The wooden construction is heavier than we wagered. And standing right beneath it, in the path of the thing that’s about to collapse onto her oblivious head, is Bianca, a stack of coffee in hand.

  I don’t pause to think about it. I react on sheer instinct. I sprint across the stage. Somewhere behind me, I hear more shouts, even a scream. That’s enough to finally catch Bianca’s attention and make her whip around to look at me, eyes widening. Then she looks up, and now she has the sense to scream too, just before I collide with her.

  The force of my body crashing into her sends the coffees flying out of her h
ands and splashing across the stage. It also sends both of us toppling to the ground, just as, with a deafening snap, the chariot’s rope finally gives way.

  We hit the ground, Bianca beneath me. My head flies past hers though, cracks against the wood of the stage. I have just enough consciousness left to hear a deafening splinter as the chariot lands on the stage too, inches from us. Then the world spins and swirls into star bursts, before it fades to black.

  14

  John

  I’m on my way back from lunch break when my phone starts to ring. It’s the office, though a line I don’t recognize. Not any of my usual secretaries. I pick up, only to hear a harried, familiar male voice on the other end. Daniel.

  “Get in here, right now,” he says. “It’s your wife.”

  If I’d been holding anything, I would have dropped it. As it is, I barely manage to hang onto my phone. I’d just parked my car, and I fly out of it now, not bothering to lock it behind me as I sprint toward Pitfire. Belatedly, I register the vehicle parked out front, lights flashing.

  An ambulance.

  Fuck.

  Not Mara. Please, let her be safe.

  I take the steps two at a time, and once I’m inside the building, I break into a flat out run toward the main stage. It’s where Mara was supposed to be all day today, starting to put together the set she’s been painstakingly preparing in pieces up until now. I know how excited she was about today. How much she enjoys putting a set together like this.

  What’s happened to ruin it?

  I reach the theater and yank open the double doors at the back, only to nearly collide with a stretcher rolling out of the main entrance. My stomach sinks straight through my shoes and down into the floor. Lying across that stretcher, her eyes shut, an IV stuck into her arm… “Mara!” My voice breaks on that one word.

  A paramedic grabs my arm, pulls me back. “Sir, we need to get through.”

  “That’s my wife,” I bark.

  His grip on my arm relaxes a little, and his expression shifts to one of understanding. “She’s all right, Mr. Walloway. It looks like just a concussion, but we’re going to need to run some tests.”

  My gaze darts from her unconscious form to the stretcher, and then follows the thought out to the stage behind her. “What happened?” I bark, and my question isn’t so much directed at the paramedic anymore as it is at the cluster of my employees scattered around the stage. I spot Bianca, pacing back and forth, her head in her hands, her whole body shaking. Near her, but not quite touching her, Daniel is holding something—a frayed piece of rope. There’s wood in splinters all across the stage.

  My stomach sinks. The wreckage looks bad. Was Mara in the middle of that?

  The paramedic is handing me something. A card, with an address. “Follow us with her things,” he says, and only when he says that do I register other things scattered across the stage. Mara’s purse, a recognizable lump near the side of the stage, almost as if she dropped it in a panic and bolted. “Your wife is going to be fine, I promise.”

  It’s an empty promise, I know. Nobody can promise that for anyone else. But still, it does relax me, just a little, to glance past this competent man toward my wife prone on her stretcher, with those words in my ears. She’s going to be fine, I repeat to myself, before I finally relax my hold on the paramedic and let him go to do his job. Let him take care of my Mara.

  In the meantime, feeling less than useless, I pace toward the stage, glaring at everyone in my path.

  “Explain what happened,” I bark when I reach the stage itself. I grimace, looking at the wreckage. It looks like some wooden contraption fell from a height. It probably even damaged the floorboards of the stage itself. Fuck. This is going to be expensive. But as long as Mara is all right, that’s all I care about.

  “I don’t know how it happened,” Daniel is saying, as I cross behind him to scoop up Mara’s things. Her purse. Her wallet. Some other items, including an envelope, that fell out of the purse itself.

  I pause mid-gathering to glance at him. He holds up a frayed rope to demonstrate.

  “It looks like somebody tampered with this. Cut part of the line to weaken it. But… who would do that?” Daniel’s frown deepens.

  But my gaze drifts past him, to where Bianca is sitting on the edge of the stage, rocking back and forth, her head in her hands, moaning a little. Suspicion crystalizes in my gut. I cross toward her, still holding Mara’s things. When I get close enough, I can hear what Bianca’s muttering under her breath.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her; I didn’t. I just wanted to scare her… Just a scare, that’s all…”

  With a scowl, I plant myself next to her, arms crossed. “Why,” I say, loud enough to make Bianca jump and spin around, her eyes wide and fixed on me. “Why did you do this,” I repeat, gesturing over my shoulder toward Daniel and the frayed rope he’s holding.

  Bianca stares at me, then him, and for a moment, I think she’s going to deny it. Play dumb. It would probably come naturally to her. But then her throat works with a hard swallow, and she bows her head. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispers into her lap.

  “What did I ever do to you? What did Mara ever do?”

  “Nothing,” Bianca blurts. Then her eyes harden, and she sets her jaw. “It wasn’t me you hurt. It was my sister.”

  I frown, confused. “What are you—”

  “Heather.”

  I stare at her. Of course. Heather had an older half-sister, one she talked about often enough. Though she never mentioned her name. Their last names are different, too… But now that I’m looking, I see the resemblance. The hard set of Bianca’s jaw, the flash in her eyes. “You’re fired,” I spit, too furious to say anything else. “You have fifteen minutes to get off my property before I call the police. And that is being generous, I hope you know,” I add, when Bianca’s eyes narrow in response.

  At least she listens, though. She shoves off the stage, shoulders tense, and marches toward the exit.

  “The rest of you, clean this up,” I bark, starting to tuck Mara’s things back into her purse. But my fingers pause on the last item. The envelope. Because the creamy paper, embossed with gold around the edges, has my name on it. Written in Mara’s elegant, familiar curving handwriting.

  What in the world?

  Daniel’s asking questions, something about the stage. I wave a hand. I don’t care. “Charge whatever you need to the company account,” I reply. “Make sure this is safe, next time, before you go testing something prematurely.”

  The rest of the crew nod, sobered by the disaster. But my mind is a million miles away from here. I need to get to Mara. I need to be with my wife, to make sure that she’s all right, after everything that just happened.

  And along the way… I need to find out what this letter is all about.

  I march out of the auditorium, tearing into the envelope as I go. A little part of me feels bad about snooping. But it has my name on it, after all. She clearly intended to give it to me, before this whole mess happened, and interrupted whatever she’d had planned.

  And with her in the hospital, I need any sort of connection to her I can reach for. Any way to reassure myself that what the paramedic said on his way out of the doors is true—that she’s going to be fine. That my wife will be okay.

  But whatever I expected when I tear into the envelope and read her neat handwriting on the custom card she made for me, it wasn’t this.

  John,

  The night we met, I let loose for the first time in my life. The next morning, I thought I should regret it. I thought I’d made a mistake. But I didn’t. Letting you into my life—letting you change my whole life—was the best accidental choice I ever made.

  Now, I think we might have made another one. A similar one, one that will change everything… but which might just be the best accident we could have hoped for.

  I know I told you I wasn’t ready for children. And that’s still true. I’m not ready. I don’t know if I�
��ll ever feel ready. But apparently the world had other plans for us. Because I’m pregnant, John. I’m carrying your child.

  And, if you’re up for it too… I’d like to keep it. I’d like to start a family with you.

  As long as we both agree, we’ll keep pursuing our careers too. We won’t lose sight of ourselves. No matter what happens, this will make us stronger, John. Just like everything else we’ve already faced, together.

  I love you.

  Beneath it, she included a drawing. It’s me, I can tell that from a glance, but it’s a me I’ve never seen before. Looking at that drawing, at how she views me when I look at her, I see a whole new side of myself—because that’s what she brings out in me. A man I didn’t even know existed before I met her.

  A better version of me.

  And now… My heart leaps. A huge smile breaks out across my face. She’s pregnant. My wife is pregnant. We’re going to have a baby together.

  But as soon as the news hits me, an alternate, terrifying thought occurs. Because I remember her injury, the stretcher. What if something happened? What if she’s hurt worse than the paramedics thought? What if…?

  I can’t even allow myself to finish the thought. I refuse. Instead, I stuff the envelope back into Mara’s purse with the rest of her things and practically sprint toward the parking lot. I need to get to the hospital. I need to make sure my wife and our baby—our baby, oh my God, we’re having a baby—are safe. I need to protect my family. Because now, no matter what happens, they come first, always.

  15

  Mara

  “Mara?”

  The voice is far off, far away from me, somewhere floating in my subconscious. It’s familiar, reassuring. But I don’t need to worry. Not here, not where I am. I’m lying in a field of tall grass, on a picnic blanket, cradled in my favorite place in the world—against John’s chest, with his arms around me, protective, secure. Beside us on the blanket, a smiling little ball of joy beams up at us, gurgling happily. Our baby, I know, without needing to be told. That’s our child, with us.