Failure to Match: Chapter 35

Some of the scars were more prominent than the others, as though they’d suffered overlapping burns. Some of them were white, others tinted just a little pink. But all of them looked stretched out, like they’d grown with their owner.

That was the part that made my breath catch—the evidence that they’d once belonged to a child. Without thinking, I reached for them. Jackson tensed when the tips of my fingers brushed his skin, but he didn’t pull away.

My throat ached, my heart heavy as I traced the dots. How bad did the original burns need to be for their scars to last this long? And why the shape?

As though he’d read my mind. Jackson cleared his throat. “It’s not an initial, doesn’t have anything to do with anyone’s name. The D stands for discipline, something I severely lacked at thirteen, according to my father.”

I tried to swallow the emotion lodged at the base of my throat, tried to blink back the wetness blurring my eyes. “They look… they must have been deep.”

After a short pause, he said, “I earned one whenever he thought I was slacking off… or if he’d had a little too much to drink and decided that the way I was breathing wasn’t to his liking.”

I brushed my fingers over the ones at the beginning of the curve. They were noticeably worse than the others. Bigger, deeper, more marred.

“Sometimes he completed the D before I’d had a chance to fully heal, so he’d just start going over them again.”

My lips wobbled, the aching mass in my throat swelling. Even if I’d known what to say, I wouldn’t have been able to get the words out without dissolving into tears. I dropped my hand and rolled my trembling lips. The urge to lean forward and kiss his pain away kicked at my chest, but it would only make this next part harder.

“I told you she wasn’t talking about him,” he said.

“I didn’t think—” My voice split into an uneven half, opening the dam. “You didn’t have to… I’m sorry.”

A harsh breath rushed out of him, his pale eyes sharpening. “Stop crying,” he demanded.

“Okay.” I took a sleeve to my face. “Sorry.”

“Jamie.” The skin underneath his left eye feathered unhappily. “Stop it.”

“I’m trying!” My god. If he’d just give me a minute.

“This wasn’t why I showed them to you.” He quickly buttoned up his shirt, his brows pulling into a deep frown.

“I know.”

“I was just trying to—damn it, Jamie.” To his utter dismay, I’d hiccuped. “I had a plan.”

“So-orry.” I was a broken record of apologies, and I didn’t care.

His thawing gaze slid all over my blotchy face, and his thumb brushed away a rogue tear that had slid down to my bottom lip. “I fucking hate it when you cry.”

“Sorr-ry.”

“Stop that, too.”

“Okay.”

He gave me a minute, soothing away my tears as they fell. Once I’d gathered the pieces of myself into a somewhat solid pile again, he murmured, “Do you have enough proof now? Can you sign the contract or do I need to⁠—”

“Okay.”

“I… what?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll sign it.” He didn’t deserve to be forced into a relationship, and if this was the only way I could really help, so be it. “But I’ve got a few conditions and they’re nonnegotiable.”

“Anything,” he said, voice light with disbelief. “Whatever you want, just tell me. The agreement I had drawn up has a two-hundred-million dollar⁠—”

“I won’t do it for money,” I said firmly. “Or any sort of material gain. That includes properties, cars, company shares, or whatever else you’re thinking of compensating me with.”

His brows pinched. “Jamie⁠—”

“No.” I shook my head. “I won’t budge on it. You’re my friend and I care about you. So I’ll do this for you as a favor, or I won’t do it at all.”

His eye twitched. “As my wife⁠—”

“On paper.” Which was a perfect segway to my next condition. “I will be your wife on paper for exactly one year, just until those shares are legally yours.”

The tension in his forehead eased, his eyes searching mine.

“I want the same relationship terms and boundaries that you had in the original agreement. Separate bedrooms, separate lives, an open marriage, all of it. We will be husband and wife on paper, and we can maintain a friendship outside of our contractual obligations, but I can’t offer you any more than that, Jackson.”

He swallowed roughly, eyes continuing to slip between mine, studying them.

“And I can’t… have a child with you. If you need an heir, then you’ll have to figure something else out.”

He said nothing, so I cleared my throat and moved on to my last condition. “But before all that, you have to complete the Immersive program and go on the dates I set you up on. If you still haven’t found someone you like by the end, I’ll sign the agreement.”

I couldn’t think of a more reasonable solution than that. It gave him what he needed and reduced the chances of me getting my heart shattered. Plus, I needed time to figure out how I’d handle getting married to a client without scorching my reputation in the industry and never landing a job in it again.

I shifted on his lap, my pulse restless under his gaze. It didn’t help that I couldn’t quite decipher his expression. “And I also think… with all that going on, it’s probably best if we stop sleeping together right away. We should go back to being just friends.”

“We were never just friends,” he ground out.

“Fine, but we can start now, can’t we?”

“Why? Why the boundaries?”

“Well, for one, if it got out that you and I were sleeping together, I’d not only lose my current job, but I’d also be blacklisted from the entire industry. I’m thinking we should stop before that happens.”

His brow ticked. “What do you mean blacklisted?”

“I mean I’ll never be able to find a job at a matchmaking firm again.”

“That would never happen.”

“I don’t think you understand just how taboo⁠—”

“Let me rephrase,” he interrupted. “I would never allow that to happen.”

I sighed, but before I could piece together a reasonable argument, he said, “We have an understanding now, so why can’t we carry it into the marriage? We get along great, the sex is fucking phenomenal, and we… this works, Jamie.”

“Those are my conditions.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

“Because why?”

Fuck’s sake. “Because if we keep this up, I’m going to fall in love with you, Jackson.”

There. I said it. I’d alluded to it a bunch of times, but he hadn’t seemed to⁠—

“You won’t.”

It took me a second. “I’m sorry?”

His fingers dug into my thighs, his words firm and unwavering when he said, “You won’t fall in love with me.”

I blinked back at him. “No… I definitely will.”

Were we really about to have this argument?

“You won’t.”

Yup. We were really about to have this argument.

I grabbed his stupid, lovable face as my eyes narrowed. “Jackson, if we keep sleeping together—if I marry you and you don’t stop with all the affection—I’m going to fall in love with you.”

It wasn’t even a question. It would happen.

“You can’t know that for sure.”

“I do. I’m going to fall stupidly, madly, head over heels in love with you, and you’re going to end up resenting me for it.”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“It is.”

“I don’t think⁠—”

“I’m already halfway there, okay?” I snapped in utter exasperation. “We need to stop. It will never just be sex for me with you. I mean, just… look at this place!” I released his face and gestured to our surroundings, to everything he’d created. “Look at how beautiful you are!”

I didn’t stand a chance.

I wished he could see himself through my eyes. He’d have no choice but to believe me then.

“It’ll be a nightmare,” I said. “Full stop. We’ll be married and I’ll be in love with you and you know what’ll happen then?”

He swallowed. Shook his head.

“I’ll start to hope, Jackson.” The path ahead was clear as day, and it was drenched in a whole lot of darkness, heartbreak, and despair. “Every time you kiss me, I’ll hope it means to you what it does to me. Every time you show me affection, I’ll hope it means that you’re starting to love me back. And I won’t be able to help it. So, unless…” My fingers pressed into my palms as my stupid heart skipped and stuttered. “Unless there’s like a chance you’ll… We should stop, if not.”

He stayed so silent for so long that it became suffocating.

I couldn’t handle it.

“Is there a chance that if… if we kept going and I fell in love with you… is there even a small chance that you could ever… feel that way about me, do you think?”

I didn’t know how many times I needed to hear it for the truth to sink in, but I promised myself this would be the last. I held my breath, waiting. It didn’t take long.

“No.”

To his credit, he said it quite softly. The fact that it landed like a punch to the gut wasn’t on him, it was on me. I’d asked for it.

“Okay.” I shot him a wobbly smile. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “Okay.” I didn’t know why I said it twice. He’d heard me fine the first time. “Can I just… It’s going to sound silly, but can you maybe say it? I think I’ve misread some of the signs and I need to hear the words for it to sink in, if that’s okay.”

His throat worked as he hesitated. I understood how ridiculous and unfair the request was, but I knew that if I didn’t hear the words for myself, I’d always cling on to the What If.

“I’m never going to fall in love with you.”

That punch didn’t go for the gut, it went straight to my heart. I winced.

“Jamie…”

“No, it’s okay, don’t worry about it, you really don’t have to explain. Thank you for your honesty, seriously. I just… misinterpreted our chemistry and you kissed my hand and it—not that it’s your fault. You couldn’t have been more clear with me from the beginning. So it’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

He grabbed a hold of my wrist when I tried to slip off his lap. I couldn’t look at him anymore though.

“Wait, just⁠—”

“No, like, it’s okay,” I assured him, nodding aggressively. It would’ve been more convincing if a whole lot of tears hadn’t already started streaming down my chin and neck. “It’s okay. I get it, I really do. It’s fine. But let’s maybe try to avoid any unnecessary physical contact while I get over you, okay?”

Slowly, reluctantly, he released my wrist.

“I know you have some thinking to do, so… I’ll see you later then. And seriously, don’t worry about this, I’ll get over it—you, I mean. With a bit of time, so… yeah. Okay. I’ll see you later. At some point.”

Thankfully, I managed to hold the first sob until the door was shut and I was completely out of earshot.

Or maybe that was just another lie I chose to tell myself.