“Not that,” he reassures, but the cautiousness in his tone isn’t soothing me any.
“Thenwhat?”
He approaches me with the phone outstretched. I take it from him and scrutinize yet another blurry snapshot. This one is of us proudly holding up a piece of paper, Black Elvis beaming in the background. I don’t even need to zoom in on the document, because with one glance, it’s already too familiar to me.
No.No.There’s no fucking way.
Thomas clears his throat and delivers the exact news I feared. “I think that’s our marriage license.”
Chapter 8
Thomas
“Motherfucker.”
Stella’s drawn-out curse confirms my thoughts. As she shoves the phone back into my hands, the reality of our situation slams into me along with it.
We’re married. Legally and officiallymarried. And I have zero memory as tohoworwhyit happened.
Motherfuckeris absolutely right. I might even elect to go with something stronger, because we’ve just woken up in a nightmare. Or maybe even hell.
Stella paces the living room, still swearing, fury radiating off every inch of her. I always thought I was good at keeping my emotions under control, well trained by two sets of grandparents who believed in a stiff upper lip. But that idea of myself went to shit when the whole world heard my tirade against Lorenzo Castellucci, and it’s going even further to shit now as I sit down hard on the edge of the couch, lifting a fist to my lips to keep from saying something I know will make Stella lose it more than she already is.
I take a deep breath, forcing myself not to let my anxietybleed into the air. Stella’s panicking enough for the both of us, her chest heaving as she stalks back and forth in front of the coffee table. I need to be the rational one, because I’m getting the distinct feeling that—intelligent as she seems to be—she’s not going to be smart about this.
“How thefuckdid this happen?” she snarls, dark hair flying as she whirls on me.
Even in her wrinkled dress and smudged eyeliner, with pure fire in her gaze, she’s a vision. I may not know how all of this came to be—how it went from just trying to get her into my bed tomarriage—but there’s no denying this is part of thewhy.
I’m well aware that’s not what she wants to hear, though, so I keep my mouth shut.
“How did we even get a marriage license?” she presses. “All of this happened in the middle of the damn night!”
I nearly shrug, but I might be able to answer this one for us. I type a few things into the search bar of my phone, wincing when I see the result. “Apparently, the license bureau here stays open until midnight. I’m guessing we made it in right before closing.”
Stella makes a strangled noise, hands lifting to clutch her head. If I don’t want her to have a stroke, then I need to do something to walk her back from the edge.
“We’re going to fix this,” I say as evenly as I can manage, despite wanting to vomit from nerves myself. Or maybe it’s the whiskey still sloshing around in my stomach. Either way, all of this has me feeling violently ill.
I can’t be married. I just…can’t. I’ve never even had a girlfriend, for Christ’s sake. So how did I end up with awife?
Fuck, this is a disaster. All I wanted was a night of no-strings sex with the hottest woman I’ve seen in ages—possibly ever. Instead, I ended up getting every string imaginable.
It’s bad enough I’ve already ruined my reputation and jeopardized my career with one mistake—now I have another fuckup to add to the list. What are the McMorris team bosses going to think when all of this undoubtedly leaks? What will my sponsors think? Will I evenhaveany sponsors once they find out I drunkenly married a stranger? What’s to say they won’t think I’m some irresponsible wanker who is more of a liability than an asset and finally kick me to the curb?
Yeah, I’mdefinitelygoing to be sick.
Stella tosses me a scathingly skeptical look at the suggestion this can be fixed, and I can’t blame her. It sounded weak to my own ears. I have to do better. I need an actual solution.
“Look, we’ll clean ourselves up and then go back to the chapel,” I offer. That’s got to be the best course of action here. “They have our license, right?” I wait until Stella nods haltingly before continuing. “In that case, we just have to find the officiant who performed the wedding before they send the license to be filed. We’ll get it from them, destroy it, and be done.”
It’s the perfect solution, a way to prevent anything from becoming legally registered, something we can move on from without too much fallout. But Stella’s frown isn’t budging.
“I think it might be too late,” she says. I’m sure her stomach is sinking with her words, just like mine is. “An organization like that probably mails those off first thing in the morning. They do dozens of weddings every day, and people are anxious to get their marriage certificates as soon as possible.”
Shit.While there’s a chance that they could still be sitting on our signed license, it’s more likely they’ve already sent it back to be certified. Fucking America and their ridiculous laws that allow strangers to get married. This wouldn’t have happened in England, but this is what I get for spending time in this anarchic former colony.
“We have to figure out how to get this annulled,” she goes on, voice firm, like she’s finally come to terms with it all and is willing to look at this logically. She got to this point faster than I thought she would. “Do you think anything is out in the media?”
