The Bride Test (33 page)

“That was your plan? To get a scholarship and student visa?” he asked.

She nodded and pasted a determined smile on her face, bracing herself in case he laughed at her like the people at the community college probably had.

“Khai loves you, you know,” he said instead.

She stiffened like lightning had struck her, and her heart skipped one beat, two beats. “He told you that?”

“No,” he said with a twist of his lips. “He didn’t tell me that. Well, not with words. But I can tell. You know he’s autistic, right?”

That word. She remembered hearing it before. “Yes, he told me.”

He searched her face. “Do you know what it means?”

She fidgeted with her phone uncomfortably. To be honest, she hadn’t thought about it much. “I thought maybe the touching. There is a way to do it.”

“That’s part of it, but there’s more. His mind is different— no, it’s not a sickness. The way he thinks and also the way he processes emotions are not like most people.”

That gave her pause. Yes, he was different, but his differences weren’t unpassable obstacles. At least, she hadn’t found them to be. To her, Khải was just Khải, and she accepted him the way he was.

The thing she still hadn’t been able to accept was the fact that he didn’t love her, that he didn’t accept
her
.

As if he could read her mind, Quân said, “Khai loves you. He just hasn’t figured it out yet.”

She had difficulty believing that. Love wasn’t complicated. You either felt it or you didn’t. There was nothing to “figure out.”

Quân’s gaze turned penetrating, and he asked, “Do you want to find out once and for all if he does? I know how.”

Her pride told her to say no, she’d given him enough chances. But her heart had to know. Feeling vulnerable, she said, “Yes, how?”

He looked her directly in the eyes and said, “If it doesn’t work, you’ll end up married to me. Willing to gamble?”

K
hai stared at the Evite on his phone in a dazed stupor. He had to be dreaming— no, not dreaming, nightmaring. This couldn’t be real.

YOU’RE CORDIALLY INVITED TO

Esmeralda and Quan’s Wedding

Saturday, August 8th
11:00 a.m.– 3:00 p.m.
San Francisco, CA

PLEASE RSVP BY AUGUST 7TH

Who the hell sent their invitations out the same week as their wedding? No one, that was who. He was probably still in bed, hugging Esme’s pillow close because it smelled like her. The scent had been fading, and he didn’t know what he’d do when it was gone altogether. Start cuddling up with the dirty laundry she’d left behind maybe.

His phone buzzed with an incoming call as he stared at the Evite.

Quan mobile.

He hit the talk button immediately. “I just got your Evite.”

Quan laughed, the fucker.

“It’s not funny,” Khai said, but his relief was almost dizzying. It was just a practical joke.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Quan said. “We’re really getting married Saturday.”

His brother’s words hit Khai like a punch in the gut, and he sank down onto his couch. Esme’s glass on the coffee table caught his eye. There was only a tiny amount of water left inside. It would probably dry out around the same time she married his traitor of a brother.

“You’re really getting married?” he asked.

“That’s the plan, yeah.”

“To Esme.”
His
Esme.

“It’s either that or watch her leave on Sunday,” Quan said. “This is mostly to get her a green card, but I
do
like her. I’m looking at it as a trial period. Who knows, maybe it’ll work out, and we’ll make a go of it.”

That gut-punched feeling worsened, and Khai gripped the edge of the couch with his free hand and squeezed until his knuckles turned white.

“Unless you’re going to do it,” Quan added.

“I already asked her.”

“You know what you have to do if you want her to say yes.”

“I. Don’t. Love. Her,” he gritted out. Why did people keep pushing him on this? It wasn’t like he
enjoyed
saying he didn’t love her. He
wanted
to love her. He just ... didn’t.

“Did you get rid of that bike yet?” Quan asked in a casual tone.

Khai’s muscles tightened until the blood vessels on his arm bulged. “No.”

“Maybe you should go do that.” Khai opened his mouth to argue, but before he could get a word out, Quan said, “I gotta go, but you’re coming Saturday, right?”

“Yeah,” Khai said.

“Great. See you then.”

The line disconnected, and the gravity in the room pulled him down further.

This wasn’t just a dance or a night. This was marriage. Esme was marrying Quan. She’d be sharing his apartment with him, maybe even his bed because of the nightmares, smiling at him every day, filling his silence, reading his accounting books.

She would fall in love with Quan. If she could fall for Khai, she’d
definitely
fall for Quan. And Quan would love her back. Quan would be excellent to her.

Fuck, he didn’t want his brother to be excellent to Esme.

He pressed his palms to his eye sockets until his eyes hurt, but then he let his hands drop away, and he was staring at her glass again. There was only a millimeter or two of water left, and when it was dry, the likelihood of her filling it was basically zero.

What should he do? He couldn’t let her go, and he couldn’t marry her. But he couldn’t let her marry Quan, either. None of the available options were acceptable.

He clenched his jaw and shot to his feet. That meant he had to find another option. And he knew just the one.

T
omorrow was the big day, and Khải hadn’t called or tried to see Esme even once.

If he was willing to let her marry his brother, he couldn’t be jealous.

Quân was wrong.

Just as she thought of him, Quân strode into the restaurant. Her chest constricted when she saw the large garment bag thrown over his shoulder.

She could guess what that was, and it made her palms sweat.

He set it down on the table and aimed a lopsided smile at her. “Vy borrowed this for you.”

Esme wiped her hands on her apron. After looking at him to confirm it was okay, she reached for the zipper and pulled it down.

Gauzy folds of cloth spilled out of the bag, and she gasped and covered her mouth. It was Sara’s ten-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown.

Quân chuckled at her reaction. “It turns out booking wedding venues last minute is pretty nuts. You kinda have to take what you can get, and what I got was San Francisco City Hall— the couple who reserved it had some massive breakup and canceled yesterday. You’re going to want to dress up.”

“It is nice?”

“Yeah, pretty nice,” Quân said with another laugh.

She pulled her hands away from the dress and wiped her palms over her apron again. She knew he’d mentioned marrying her if Khải didn’t figure out his feelings, but he couldn’t mean it. Why would he want to marry her? He didn’t know anything about her.

With a wrinkle of her lips, she zipped the garment bag back up. “You should cancel the wedding and return this to Sara. Anh Khải did not call me. Don’t waste your money.”

“Can’t. I already paid for city hall, and your family are on their way, remember?” His eyes gleamed as he aimed a clever smile at her, distracting her from the spark of desperate joy that came when she thought of seeing her girl after so long. “Besides, if you look happy because I’m spoiling you, he’ll get even more jealous.”

“More?” A bad taste filled her mouth. It was clear that he wasn’t jealous
at all
.

Quân stepped close and tilted his head as he looked at her. “He’s totally jealous over you. You know that, right?”

She stared at him without answering.

“I meant it when I said I’d marry you,” Quân said. “It’d just be a temporary thing, anyway. I’ll do my thing, and you’ll do yours. Separate rooms. We can divorce when the time comes.”

“ But ...” She shook her head in bemusement. “
Why
help me?”

A sad smile stretched over his lips. “Because I’m his big brother, and I need to make things right.” Then his smile warmed and reached his eyes. “And I like you and want to see you make it. It’s a small thing for me to do, but it means a lot to you, right?”

The breath seeped out of her, and all she could say was,
“Yes.”
It was everything to her.

He pushed the dress back toward her. “Really, it’s not a big deal to me, and my mom loves having you help at the restaurant. I don’t see any downside to this.”

Tension built up inside. She had to tell him. He deserved to know. She stared down at the garment bag, unsure if she should pull it closer or push it away. It depended on how he reacted to what she was going to say. “I have a little girl. Jade. She was home. In Việt Nam. Khải ...” She bit her lip and ran her finger along the zipper. “He does not know about her.”

When a long moment of silence passed, she peeked up and found Quân smiling at her. She saw no judgment in his eyes. “I like kids.”

“You do?” she said on an exhaled breath.

“Sure.”

“D-does Anh Khải?”

He thought about it for a second before saying, “I think he’d like
your
kid.”

“Do you still want to marry?” she made herself ask. Sweat misted her skin, but she continued, “I want her to come live with me— with us. And my
má
and
ngoại
.”

“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “Let’s do it. The more the merrier, right? It actually doesn’t matter much to me. I’m hardly home.”

Her throat choked up, and she swiped the moisture from her eyes with the back of her arm as her body weakened with relief. “Then I am happy and grateful to marry you. But we do not need a nice wedding.” Honestly, she wanted a cheap one. She was going to owe Quân for the rest of her life, and she didn’t want to add an expensive wedding to her tab.

He shook his head at her. “I can see you worrying. Don’t.”

“ But—”

“It’s really fine, Esme.” And this time, there was a hard edge to his tone and expression.

She nodded. “Okay, no worrying.” But that was a lie.

Marrying Quân was the solution to all her problems. Once she married him, she could apply to schools as a legal resident and work for her tuition. She wouldn’t need a scholarship in order to pursue her new dream.

But a large part of her still hoped Khải would intervene, and worried that he wouldn’t. Her future, even an empowered one, wasn’t perfect unless he was in it. And not as her brother-in-law.

T
oday was the day.

Khai had done everything humanly possible to find a way out of this mess. He’d spent money, pulled strings, found encouraging leads— if he bought a racehorse, he could say Esme was a horse trainer and get her a special visa that way— but he needed more time. He was out of time.

The wedding started in an hour.

He’d changed into his tux and was ready to go, but he couldn’t bring himself to get into his car. That old playground song kept looping in his head.
Esme and Quan sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G ...

He’d lose his fucking mind if he saw Esme and Quan kiss. She was
his
to kiss, his to have and to hold, his to—

His to what?

He couldn’t stand looking at the now-empty glass on his coffee table, so he fled. He didn’t have a destination in mind, but of course, he ended up there.

In the garage.

He pressed the garage button, and as light filled the dark space, he advanced toward the bike. Dust particles sparkled in the sunlight like fireflies, and he breathed the old mustiness and gasoline-on-concrete smell into his lungs. For a moment, he shut his eyes, letting the scent take him back to a different time.

He yanked the tarp off the motorcycle and ran his fingers over one of the black handles. Bumpy texture, the grooves that fingers had worn into the rubber, cold, lifeless. It was always this way. Always disappointing. Just like when he’d walked it home after Esme took it to the store.

He ran his fingertips over the deep scratches on the side. He half expected to find blood in there, but his fingers met nothing but rough metal. Against the odds, this was all the motorcycle had to show for its collision with a four-ton semitruck. Andy hadn’t been so lucky.