CHAPTER THIRTEEN RIGGS

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

RIGGS

We took the subway back to her apartment. I sprang over the barriers again.

After she stopped chastising and berating me about the unpaid check, she felt so charitable she stopped at a Duane Reade and treated me to a few pairs of new socks, because mine, as she explained, had “more holes than a plot in a porn.”

“Have you ever even watched porn?” I walked shoulder to shoulder with her across the platform now. I couldn’t imagine the woman touching a penis. No, scratch that—I definitely could. Mine. Kneading, stroking, spitting, kissing. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was still a virgin.

“I’m not going to answer that question.”

The air stood still, hot and humid, as summer soaked the walls of the subway. There were only a few people loitering on the platform.

“Just tell me you know babies don’t get delivered by storks.”

A look of confusion marred her delicate face. “I beg your pardon? I’ve just ordered one from the internet. The stork agency offered a great discount.”

I chuckled, pushing my fingers into her hair and messing it, just as an excuse to touch her. She wasn’t so bad when she was being her true, undiluted self.

“If you ever want to watch porn, I have some recs,” I offered.

“Color me surprised.”

“We could do a fake-movie date to go with our fake relationship.”

“That’s a real pass from me.” She scrunched her nose.

“Is that because I’m poor?”

“It’s because I don’t do one-night stands, especially with people I have to share a flat with for the unforeseeable future.”

Cocksucker must’ve been a shitty lover if she was so prickly about discussing sex. We were both grown-ups. Me, mostly chronologically, but still.

“The offer still stands,” I said easily. “Everyone should watch porn at least once in their lifetime. It’s an experience.”

“Right. So!” She clapped her hands together, seemingly eager to change the subject. “What are you going to do now that your boss thinks you’re staying in New York for a while?”

“Wanting to get rid of me already?”

The train approached the platform with a loud shriek.

“Don’t pretend like our arrangement is ideal.” She crossed her arms defensively.

It wasn’t. And she was right: I needed to find a project to throw myself into. There was no way I was going to sit around in the same place for months.

“I’ll just do short trips for a few weeks, then tell Emmett you were a huge mistake, and we’re getting a divorce. You won’t mind if I spread a little rumor you gave me syphilis, right?”

“And what if .?.?. you know.” She cleared her throat. “This works out, and we wait until I get a green card? The time period between a CR1 visa and a green card is just a couple years.”

“What’s the point in that?” I frowned. “Don’t you wanna marry up?”

“Marrying up would take time if BJ and I don’t get back together.” She licked her lips, looking down. At least she was honest enough not to deny her life’s ambition.

“Is that really the height of your dreams? Marrying for money?”

“I won’t be marrying for money. I’d be marrying for security. For peace of mind. For the privilege of not having to worry about where food is going to come from, paying the electricity bills, or having something warm to wear during the winter. Marriage has been a pragmatic arrangement between families and individuals since the dawn of time. Love is a recent, unwelcome development. Indulgent and self-centered. I personally reckon it’s all Jane Austen’s fault. Couldn’t she have written a murder mystery? She would have spared all of us gold diggers the hassle.”

Now I was laughing so hard I couldn’t fucking breathe. She didn’t mean to be funny, but she was. My fiancée was reddening next to me, apparently mistaking my amusement for mockery. I wasn’t mocking her. I had a feeling her need for financial security was deeply rooted in some really dark memories, and I couldn’t judge her for it. It was her ruthless hardheadedness that I found refreshing. She was like John D. Rockefeller. She had a talent to find opportunity in disaster.

“Hey, don’t pretend like what you’re doing isn’t pragmatic.” She stubbed my chest with her finger. “You’re marrying someone because of your work. Couldn’t you look for another job?”

I could. And, frankly, I should. But I didn’t want to let Emmett win. Quitting would be an admission of defeat.

“Don’t give me any ideas, Poppins, or you’ll end up groomless.”

We hopped onto the train. It was packed. Only one seat was available. I motioned for Duffy to take it. She sat prissily with her back straight and her hands in her lap.

I towered over her, my arm slung over a pole. Speaking of Emmett, I needed to throw my engagement to Duffy into high gear. The fucker had been calling and texting me nonstop, trying to call my bluff. He didn’t believe Duffy was real. A little PR to boost this fake relationship was just what the doctor ordered.

The train started moving. I looked around. There was a nice mix of commuters. Students, millennial hipsters, tourists, and blue-collar workers. I was willing to bet my left nut that they all had working phones. It was time to execute my plan.

“Hey, Poppins.”

Her head was tilted down. She was engrossed in her phone, scrolling through secondhand designer bags in a fashion app.

“Duffy,” I said again.

“In a minute, Riggs. I think I found a quilted Chanel for two hundred bucks.”

In a minute, we might not have this kind of audience. With each station, the train was emptying out, and so was my patience.

“Duffy. Duff. Daphne. Desiree.”

“Jesus, what?” She looked up, her eyebrows dancing aggressively on her forehead, indicating her contempt. “Can’t you see I’m doing something?”

“And I’m hoping that someone is going to be me. For the rest of our lives, baby.” I shot her a tacky, heartthrob smirk I knew made her want to strangle me, then stomp on my lifeless body.

When I slowly lowered myself to one knee, bowing my head humbly, she opened her mouth—no doubt to give me a piece of her mind. The chatter on the train stopped. People unglued their gazes from their phones and tablets. Two girlfriends who sat opposite us gasped audibly, clutching each other’s shirts. And my soon-to-be fake fiancée stared at me with horror mixed with resignation.

She wasn’t a fan of public gestures.

I wasn’t a fan of losing. And Emmett wanted me to lose.

Duffy cupped her hands over her mouth, more to stifle a curse than in shock.

“Daphne, sweetheart, the love of my life, I can’t imagine growing old without you.”

You’re already old,I could hear her sass in my mind.

“You’re my reason, my inspiration, my person. Most importantly, you’re my one. From the moment I met you. It was unorthodox, and weird, and I definitely didn’t make the best first impression.” I offered her a dimpled smirk as people in our periphery held their phones up in the air and recorded my proposal from every angle possible. “But that just makes our kismet even more special. Our ability to love one another, flaws and all, for eternity and beyond.”

For the record, I pulled every word out of my ass on a whim. Of course, I’d googled Things to say when proposing while Poppins was buying me discounted socks, but I didn’t expect the lies to fall so naturally from between my lips.

“Oh my God!” a woman screeched behind my back.

“Dreamboat alert,” someone cooed. “Sign me up, Mr. Hottie.”

“Is that Chris Hemsworth?”

“No. Chris doesn’t have this bone structure and lips.”

“I think I just manifested a Greek god.”

I dipped my head, pretending to be embarrassed by the attention. Maybe I was laying it on too thick, but it wasn’t like I was shooting for an Oscar.

“Daphne, would you do me the immense honor of being my wife? I promise to love and respect you. To give you everything your heart desires. To put your happiness before mine, and to give you the fairy tale you deserve.”

Duffy’s face was blank and white with shock. She obviously welcomed my gesture just a little more than she would an intrusion of an entire army into her apartment.

And she still hadn’t said a damn word.

Through a tight, unwavering smile, I ground out, “Take your time, Poppins. It’s not like we have an audience.”

“Eh .?.?. of course I’ll marry you .?.?. uhm, darling,” she mumbled, finally, with all the enthusiasm of a woman who had been offered a trip through a minefield. Barefoot. “It would be my honor.”

The lukewarm acceptance didn’t stop people from darting up to their feet, clapping and cheering for us. Dozens of people bracketed Duffy’s seat as I produced the ring I’d purchased at a pawnshop and slipped it onto her engagement finger. It was a simple, thin golden band with a square emerald at the center. The guy at the pawnshop said it was at least two hundred years old, which happened to fit into the kind of marriage style my fiancée wanted for herself.

“My God,” she murmured under her breath, wiggling her delicate fingers, admiring the thing. “It’s stunning.”

This, I knew, wasn’t an act. Her purple eyes sparkled like diamonds. I was surprised she found the cheap jewelry so lovely.

“Not half as stunning as you.” I lunged forward, grabbing the back of her head and kissing her temple. Her skin was hot and soft and fucking delicious. Too pure to belong to such a cunning, superficial creature. She froze the minute we touched, her breath stilling. I pulled back more reluctantly than I cared to admit.

Our eyes met and locked in a strange trance.

“I’ve been told there’s an engagement going on,” the conductor’s voice pierced through the silence in our car, making people go wild with cheers and laughter. “Congratulations to the happy couple.”

Poppins glanced around, looking self-conscious and disoriented.

“Hey!” a woman dressed in a suit who angled her phone toward us shouted. “That was the best proposal I’ve ever seen. The least you can do is give your man a real kiss.”

“Kiss!” the crowd began chanting. “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

I peered down to catch Poppin’s mien. She looked like she was about to faint. I widened my eyes in what I hoped conveyed You don’t have to do this. We don’t owe these people anything. But the truth was, it was going to look weird as hell if she didn’t kiss me.

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

“Hell, girl, if you don’t kiss him, I will, and I’m not gonna stop there!” one commuter threatened with a giggle.

Duffy looked around us in a daze. She was clearly overwhelmed. Sweat began coating her forehead. Suddenly, I felt like a class A shitbag for putting her through this. I knew she wasn’t a public-declarations kind of girl. Still, I’d done it for my own selfish reasons.

Sorry,I mouthed. I really was. Not enough to do it differently if I could—I’d grown too accustomed to putting myself above everyone else—but seeing her so miserable made my stomach feel like that time I got intense food poisoning in Spain.

With her lips flattened in disgust, Duffy rose on her toes. Everything happened in slo-mo. She put her hand awkwardly on my chest, which flexed instinctively under her touch. That made her jolt back, which made me wrap my arms around her waist, making sure she didn’t fall. She tilted her head up. Her eyes were full of misery and trepidation.

She was also the loveliest fucking thing I’d ever seen in my entire life, every landscape on Planet Earth included. No mountain, no hill, no lake, no ocean even came in a close second.

“You don’t have to,” I hissed. “Remember what we discussed? Don’t give people power over you.”

“I . . . I . . . I . . .”

“Want to kill me?” I offered as the entire population of the car continued chanting for us to kiss. The voices somehow drowned us out in the private capsule we both seemed to share.

Duffy moved her tongue around her mouth like it was numb. “I have stage fright.”

“Lucky we have a captive audience.”

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

“No, you don’t understand, I .?.?.” She took a ragged breath. “When I was little, I wasn’t very popular at school. I went to a gifted public school on a full scholarship, while Kieran went to a ‘normal’ school. I was the only poor kid there. And I was .?.?. well, very poor. During recess, other students used to gather around me and shout what they thought about me. About my uniform, my family, my .?.?. my lunch box. How empty it was. I don’t like attention.”

So that was where her obsession with money stemmed from. She was ridiculed for it.

“These people are not your asshole bullies,” I said quietly.

She blinked, processing it all very slowly. “I’m also a terrible kisser.”

“You have no way of knowing that.” Unless Cocksucker told her so, in which case I was going to personally make my way to Nepal and shove him off Everest myself.

“No, truly, I’m quite awful.”

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

“You are? All right.” I sighed. “The wedding’s off, then.”

“Really?” She winced, vulnerable all of a sudden.

“No.”

“I can’t—”

She really couldn’t. I’d seen Aunt Bessie’s meals less frozen than this woman. Which was why I took charge, dunked my head down, and kissed the living crap out of her without further ado.

.?.?. Fine, I did no such thing.

But I did lean down to give her a dry, respectable peck. It was brief. No more than a brush. I’d had more action from TSA officers giving me a pat-down at the airport, and still, somehow, my cock saw fit to nod appreciatively.

The car exploded with whistles and cheers. Camera flashes blinded us. People were obviously satisfied with our lackluster display of affection.

Duffy fell back to her seat. Her hand shook as she wiped her lips clean. “I can’t believe I told you about my school years. How mortifyi .?.?.” She trailed off when she realized her future husband’s penis was semihard and staring right back at her. Eye level.

Her eyes dragged up to my face. Shock gave way to anger.

“You have some nerve, sir,” she whisper-shouted.

“You have some lips,” I said by way of explanation. If God did exist, I was going to meet the second pair in her body too.

“Put that thing away. It looks like it’s about to stab me in the eye,” she complained, and I managed not to laugh. Just barely.

“No one told you to sit down.”

“No one told you to sexually harass me.”

“Excuse me? If anyone should be crying under the showerhead while hugging their knees, it should be me. You mentally licked my chest just a few hours ago,” I reminded her. “When we were in your apartment.”

“I did not,” she hissed, her cheeks enflamed.

“Did too.”

“Again, I can’t believe you’re pushing forty.”

“You think once you hit a certain age you start talking like Morgan Freeman?” I frowned, fed up with this line. “Thirty-seven-year-olds still say ‘fuck’ and make dick jokes and play Xbox and prefer Cheetos and soda over broccoli and chicken and still think Stranger Things is better than documentaries about migrating ants.”

“But they don’t say ‘doodie calls.’”

“Yes, they do. And what’s more—you’re about to legally bind yourself to someone who just might tattoo the phrase on his ass.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Her jaw ticked, and I knew she actually thought I was capable of it.

I smiled winningly. “Wouldn’t I, now? May I remind you, I am marrying a complete stranger because of a pissing contest with my boss.”

“Are you guys okay?” Ready to Kiss Me if My Fiancée Wouldn’t Lady cut into our argument. “You seem .?.?. tense.”

“Brilliant.” Duffy offered a fake, icy smile.

Brilliant, my ass.

She couldn’t wait to get back home so she could gargle some bleach.