Chapter 4 — The Wedding

We got married on a Wednesday at eleven in the morning inside the Manhattan Marriage Bureau on Worth Street.

There was nothing romantic about it.

The place felt more like a crowded DMV than somewhere life-changing happened. Couples filled the waiting area, some are nervous, some were excited, and some clearly regretting everything already.

A toddler cried near the vending machines while someone argued quietly over paperwork at the front desk.

Seven couples stood ahead of us in line.

I wore cream trousers and a matching blouse because the green dress suddenly felt too personal and too hopeful.

I didn’t want to look like a bride pretending this was real.

Drake — Reeve, technically, though my brain still struggled with calling him that — wore a dark suit without a tie.

He looked exactly the same as he always did: calm, controlled, completely unbothered by his surroundings.

Like marrying me was another item on his schedule.

We agreed on no guests, jusfus witnesses. Claire stood beside me wearing the expression of someone trying very hard not to commit a crime, while Eleanor Park stood near Drake with her usual unreadable composure.

The officiant barely looked up while speaking. She sounded like she’d married a thousand couples already and stopped caring around number fifty.

Then came the vows.

“Do you, Drake Reeve Javier, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

I looked at him automatically.

He wasn’t looking at me yet. His attention was focused on the officiant, like he approached everything else in his life.

“I do,” he said simply with no hesitation.

The officiant turned toward me.

“And do you, Hautea Elaine Sinclair, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

I’d prepared for this part. Told myself repeatedly that it was paperwork.

Just legal language wrapped in ceremony.

Then Drake looked at me directly.

Those pale grey eyes settled on mine, calm and unwavering, and suddenly the room felt too warm.

“I do,” I heard myself say.

“The rings.”

Drake reached into his jacket pocket smoothly. “We’re using the bands selected for the arrangement.”

Arrangement, oh yeah, I almost forgot, this was just an arrangement.

He handed me my ring first, and my breath caught slightly when I saw it its a simple gold with our names engrave on it.

I noticed that immediately.

He took my left hand carefully, his fingers warm were against mine, and slid the ring onto my finger slowly and deliberately. His touch lingered for half a second longer than necessary.

Not in a romantic way but only awareness like he understood this mattered, even if neither of us intended it to.

I managed not to shake while placing his ring on his hand. That felt like a personal victory.

“By the power vested in me by the State of New York,” the officiant announced quickly, already mentally moving toward the next couple, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You now may kiss—”

I turned toward him automatically and he was closer than I expected.

Up close, I could see faint tension in his jaw beneath all that control. I could see the exact shade of silver hidden inside his eyes.

For one strange second, neither of us moved, then he lifted a hand and cupped my face gently.

The touch shocked me more than the kiss, it was careful, that was the exact word for it like he was handling something fragile without fully understanding why.

Then he kissed me and somehow that made it worse because it felt real enough to make my heartbeat lose all common sense.

When he pulled away, his thumb brushed once against my jaw before his hand dropped.

“Congratulations,” the officiant said dryly.

Claire made a choking sound beside me that I refused to acknowledge.

We signed the paperwork after that. Shook hands with witnesses. And just like that, it was done.

I walked out of the Marriage Bureau married to Drake Javier.

The city didn’t care.

Traffic still moved. People still shouted. Somewhere nearby, a vendor yelled about hot dogs while a taxi honked aggressively at absolutely nothing.

“Lunch?” Drake asked beside me.

I looked at him. My husband.

“Sure,” I answered, because honestly, what else was there to say after marrying a billionaire before noon on a Wednesday?

We ate at a small Italian restaurant a few blocks away. The hostess greeted him by name the second we walked in, and he ordered without opening the menu.

The food was incredible.

Worse, the conversation was easy.

He asked about my photography projects. Asked what I actually wanted from my career before the contract happened. Asked thoughtful questions and listened closely to every answer like my words genuinely mattered.

I found myself telling him about the industrial photography series I’d wanted to develop for over a year — abandoned buildings, forgotten spaces, places time had moved through without mercy.

When I finished, he nodded once.

“I know someone at a preservation foundation working on similar projects in the Rust Belt,” he said.

“You should speak with them.”

I blinked. “You don’t have to do that.”

“The contract includes career support.”

Right. There it was again, a reminder that this was just a business, not a connection or intimacy, but an arrangement between two people getting something they needed.

We returned to the apartment in the early afternoon. It's our apartment now, apparently. That thought still felt absurd.

At the elevator, he glanced toward me.

“I have meetings for the rest of the afternoon,” he said. “Whitmore Gala preparations begins on Monday. My publicist will contact you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“If you need anything—”

“I’ll text.”

“Yes.” He turned slightly toward his office before stopping.

“Hautea.”

I looked up.

His eyes dropped briefly to the ring on my finger before returning to my face. For a second, it looked like he wanted to say something else.

But he didn’t.

He only nodded once before disappearing into his study.

The door closed quietly behind him. I stood alone in the hallway afterward, staring down at the gold band wrapped around my finger.

I am now officially Married.

Married to Drake Reeve Javier.