Page 20 of My Best Friend's Dad

I shove my hands over my lap while Bellatrix studies me with an intense, unwavering stare.

She’s only voicing what I just implied.

I could choose someone else. Ishouldchoose someone else. Anyone else. I should be hightailing it out of here, away from these weird coincidences and her massive hazel eyes. They were swamped with sadness the night she walked into the lounge and played the most beautiful music I have ever known, but now they’re dancing. Alight. Otherworldly.

“If I don’t agree, are you going to hex me?”

She frowns.

I frown.

Where the hell did that come from?

“I’m afraid I don’t know any hexes. My skills extend solely to helping people join their lives together, not ruining them. And if I did know of anything or anyone who could do that and do it properly, I wouldn’t be hexing you. I’d be calling up your poor fake fiancée who is in love with someone she can’t legally marry or have the world acknowledge without her family disowning her, and I’d get them to work some magic on her overbearing father.”

“How do you know he’s overbearing?” I’m starting to get a weird feeling about this.

Notstarting.

Rather, it’s intensifying.

She quirks a brow. “Do you really need to ask that?”

Right, okay. Thewhat the fucklook she’s giving me is well-earned. To her credit, when I got into this office, she sat through my entire explanation without giving in to the urge to grant me one of those, though I’m sure she had to want to. Badly.

I want to give myself awhat the fucklook now that I’ve had to explain it a few times.

Bellatrix opens up a crisp white file folder that she produces from the cupboard behind her desk. In it is a blank contract.

“Are you giving me total creative freedom?” she asks, one brow raised.

In this? Or in everything?

I know why I agreed to the wedding. Bellatrix isn’t wrong about a single thing she said. But why am I agreeing tothis? I have no motivation other than that…

I want to.

And I haven’t done something I truly wanted to do for a very long time.

Especially when it’s dangerous, off-limits, taboo, androughly half my age.

She said to experience life, not go out and ruin mine. She said to live, which involves making mistakes and messes. She didn’t imply that she’d want a repeat of what happened in the lounge that night. There was no innuendo in her eyes.

She said to live.

Have I ever really?

I flip the contract to the set of blanks on the last page.

“Don’t sign that yet. I said I’ll plan your wedding, but my terms are that you give me a chance to prove to you that you can be happy if you don’t do this.”

I frown. “You want to make the wedding succeed all while making it not succeed?”

She nods with every ounce of confidence, as if both of those things can happen at the exact same time and make perfect sense.

“The chance can’t just be one chance. It has to be three,” she says.

“Like three wishes.”