LOGINI am not the bride anyone wanted. Not my mother, who's spent my whole life measuring my body against my twin sister's. Not the family who built an empire on marrying the right woman at the right time. And certainly not Callum Ashford, the man who mocked my size when we were teenagers and never looked at me twice again, not until the law required it. When my sister Ivy's engagement collapses days before her wedding, a decades-old inheritance clause names me as her replacement, whether either of us wants it or not. Marry Callum, or watch two families lose everything they've spent generations building. I say yes for my parents. He says yes because there's no one else close enough in blood to say it instead. But the trust doesn't just want a marriage. It wants proof, a pregnancy confirmed within thirty days of the ceremony, or the whole arrangement dissolves. I refuse the version everyone assumes I'll accept without question. He's furious. I don't care. What neither of us expects is what happens in the space between resentment and duty, in stolen glances neither of us mean to give, in a husband who starts noticing the woman he spent years dismissing. But Ivy hasn't given up either, and some doors, once opened, are harder to close than anyone in that family is ready to admit. I married my twin's fiancé. I'm starting to wonder if he married the right one after all.
View More"Hey," Callum said, shrugging out of his jacket, and I watched him take me in for a beat too long before he said anything else, though whatever he saw, he let it pass without comment for now. "Good day.""Fine. Yours.""Long." He didn't come around the island the way he usually did, just stood there a moment, something deliberate in it. "I've been thinking about the other night. The conversation Voss interrupted. I don't want to let it just sit there unfinished indefinitely, pretending neither of us remembers exactly where we left off.""Callum.""I'm not trying to ambush you the second I walk through the door. I'd simply like to actually finish it tonight, if you're willing. The office. Whatever it is you were about to ask me before my phone rang." He said it carefully, watching my face for permission to keep going. "You said you needed to know what actually happened that evening, and then Voss called, and we've both been quietly pretending that conversation resolved itself, which it
My mother called on a bright afternoon, which should have been my first warning, since she almost never called without a reason already fully formed in her head before I'd even answered."Odessa." Just my name, the particular flat greeting she used when she was deciding how much patience the conversation deserved. "I had to hear the news from your sister. Your sister, Odessa. Not from you.""I was going to call you this week.""Ivy found out before I did, from what I understand, and I had to hear it secondhand from her, like I'm some distant relative rather than your own mother." She said it lightly, the way she said most cruel things, dressed up as simple observation rather than accusation. "I assume congratulations are in order, given the circumstances.""Thank you.""How did Ivy actually find out, if I'm allowed to ask. You two haven't exactly been close this past year.""I don't know. I didn't tell her myself, if that's what you're asking.""Interesting. She seemed to know a great
Callum's mom answered the door herself again, same as the first time, and pulled me into a hug before I'd even gotten both feet over the threshold."You look well," she said, studying me with the particular attentiveness she'd had since the reinstatement mess, like she was still cataloguing evidence that everything had actually turned out alright. "Doesn't she look well, Roland.""She looks like a woman who's about to be asked forty invasive questions about her diet," Roland said, appearing behind her with considerably more ease than I remembered from a few months ago, something steadier in the way he moved now. "Ignore my wife. She's been rehearsing grandmother behavior on the dog for weeks in anticipation of eventually having a real target.""We don't have a dog.""The neighbor's dog. It's been deeply confused by the attention.""That's a slight exaggeration.""It is not. The poor animal looked at me with actual pity last week, Roland, like it understood something about the state of
I was clearing my bag off the hall table that evening when my elbow caught the shopping bag that had been sitting there for three days and nearly knocked it to the floor."Careful," Callum said, appearing in the doorway a half second too fast, one hand already half reaching for it like he'd been listening for exactly this."It's fine, I caught it." I picked it up properly, mostly just to steady it, and felt the shape of something solid inside through the paper. "What's this, anyway.""Nothing. It's nothing." He said it too quickly, already crossing the room, and the sheer speed of it made me hold onto the bag a second longer than I otherwise would have, curious now in a way I hadn't been a moment ago."It's clearly not nothing. You look like I caught you doing something illegal.""I'm not doing anything illegal. It's a candle." He said it like a man confessing to something considerably worse, rubbing the back of his neck, not quite meeting my eyes. "I bought a candle. It's not a compl












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