The Marriage Swap || ON HOLD TILL SEPTEMBER

4 | 𝙲𝚛𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚜

I want you to know, even if the world won't love you, even if no one will be there for you, you will always have me. I will always love you.

-notes given to Axel by a
mysterious someone

--------᪥-------

☘︎ Axᴇʟ Hᴇʀɴᴀɴᴅᴇᴢ ☘︎

When people decide to make me or my own, a piece in their game, they need to be careful. There's no saying when I might just start playing back.

But perhaps, this time I made a mistake. Perhaps this time, in keeping something they treasured, I've invited myself into a headache.

The constant tapping of her feet against the private jet's carpeted floor, echoes louder than the slight sound of the turbulence. From the seat across mine, the runaway keeps staring at me as though I'm a specimen she wishes to dissect and observe, a puzzle she hopes to solve. A puzzle she'd be very, very dissapointed over.

My jaw locks in annoyance, the grip on my phone growing tight enough the glass could shatter. I despise people staring at me. Their criticizing gazes makes me want to burn the entire place down with everyone in it.

Doctors label my condition as a minor case of scopophobia-the fear of being stared at. But I believe it for what it is; people's intense hatred for me. It's always been the case. I don't blame, I hate each of them too.

"You still didn't tell me where we are going?" The runaway asks, taking a sip from the wine glass she'd been nursing for the last half hour, "I mean, as your supposed wife, shouldn't I be knowing which black market you're selling me off to?"

I much rather preferred when she slept like the dead for the first seven hours of the flight and didn't speak at all.

Ignoring her absurd question, I continue to re-read on my phone about the terms written on the agreement I signed with Eve Kavinsky. We had re-done our wedding vows with our rightful names again to avoid any mishap. Being a lawyer, I know these kinds of legal errors could bite you in the back at the wrong time.

So I had taken her straight to the nearest courtroom, dragged the same priest who was eager to run off earlier, to re-do our vows. When the priest had asked me to kiss my bride, I'd simply left a ghost of a kiss on her cheek and invited myself and her out of the court to the airport where my pilot waited with the jet ready.

Besides, as per the agreement, there isn't much obligation either of us have to follow when we are alone, which entails I don't need to make unnecessary small talks with her.

"Do you have germaphobia?" Eve continues, like I didn't just ignore her previous few questions.

I sigh internally. What is with this woman?

"Do you think I am the germ?" She parrotes, slurping her wine the way one would a coconut juice and not strong alcohol.

"Paris." I retort curtly to her first question, hoping to shut her from bothering me again, "We're going to Paris. That's where I live, where you will be living for the duration of the year."

There's a moment of fleeting, peaceful silence I'm rewarded with, in which my attention shifts to the text popping on my phone's screen.

Tori : Are you married yet?

The bored tone of her words echoed from a digital world apart. I simply answer with a single syllabled 'Yes'.

Tori : Should I be congratulating you?