Page 36 of Accidentally Hitched (Unintentionally Yours #1)

Amanda

M y house smells stuffy.

I think that’s normal after not being here for a long time.

It’s warm and airless and like all my belongings have gathered me-scented dust and I can’t decide if it’s comforting or depressing.

It’s more like it feels odd. In a way I feel like I don’t belong here.

And in another way, it's like I should have never left.

I drop my purse on the counter, something I never did at Callum’s. Unlike my place, his penthouse was immaculate. It’s not that I am messy. I’m not. But he has a hall closet for shoes and coats, umbrellas and hoodies. And that’s where I hung my purse.

I toss the keys in the bowl (not on a hook) and lock the door (though there’s no alarm system). Then I make my way to the fridge. I don’t know why. I cleaned it out before I moved in with him so there’s nothing in it but a water pitcher and a few condiments.

I’m also not actually hungry.

I make my way through the house, checking things.

Everything is as it was, except for the things I took to his house.

Those things have left holes in my home.

A hole where my vinyl’s used to be. A hole where the record player was.

Holes in my closets, holes where the guitars hung.

I didn’t grab any of these things before I walked out the door. I just left.

I assumed that’s what he wanted.

My thoughts suddenly feel too heavy for my head, and my body feels too heavy for my feet.

I was hoping to come home and move on with life.

Do something productive. Or at the bare minimum, watch a good movie.

Something I love that he might not enjoy.

For so long I was used to living alone. And then I got used to being with someone else…

It feels foreign being alone in a home now. Even though I hadn’t fully gotten used to being with someone either.

I turn off the lights and make my way into the bedroom.

A place that still feels the same. I have the blanket my grandmother crocheted me for my graduation.

I have the quirky little table lamp and my collection of rom-com books that no one knows I read.

There’s even one sitting on the nightstand, dog-eared about halfway through.

And for a moment I wonder if I can just go back to the way things used to be.

Before I went to Vegas with my sister to “come out of my shell”.

Before I participated in that ridiculous auction and made eye contact with…

him. Before he looked at me like no one else was in the room.

Before I accidentally waved my paddle and won a date with Callum only to have him pay for dinner and sweep me off my feet.

Before he became my boss, my lover, my fucking husband.

There was a me before all of that. And I could go back to that. Back to a job that was stressful but paid the bills. Back to focusing on my sister’s wedding and yoga with Iris and the dog-eared book on the nightstand that really was getting to a good part.

Back to me.

But then, without realizing I am doing it, I place my hand on my lower belly, and I remember. I remember the biggest reason I can’t just forget the last couple months and pretend like it never happened.

There’s a baby inside me. A baby with a heartbeat and an identity. A baby that isn’t going anywhere, whether their father wants them or not.

A tear slides down my cheek and I let it hit the floor. It’s so sudden, so heavy, so full of my grief that I swear I hear it hit the wood floor with a drop.

I crawl onto my bed, pulling that yellow and purple crocheted blanket that still smells like my grandma’s house up around me. Like cedar and lavender and softener. And as scared as I am, as hurt as I am, I keep one hand pressed firmly to my belly.

“We’ll figure it out, little one,” I whisper before drifting into sleep.

“Hello? Anyone home? Amanda?”

Kate’s voice pulls me from a heavy, dream-filled sleep and I wake up slightly nauseated and very confused.

“What time is it?” I ask as I start to sit up. My neck is kinked, and my hip is sore which tells me however long I was out, I didn’t change positions even once.

“Ten thirty,” she says, bringing bags into my room. Bags of what, I don’t know.

“At night?” I ask, looking around and squinting at the offensive sunlight coming through the blinds.

Kate blinks. “What? No. In the morning.”

“What day is it?”

“Jesus Christ, Amanda. How long were you asleep? Did you get wasted last night?”

“No, but I feel hung over,” I moan, rubbing my eyes with balled fists.

“Well lucky for you, I brought coffee.”

My eyes pop open again because it sounds too good to be true. But sure enough, Kate is setting a latte down on my nightstand on top of the rom com book. I am so happy that it’s real that I don’t even care when a little bit of the coffee spills out onto the book.

“Did I ever tell you you’re my favorite sister?” I ask, taking a sip of the hot, sweet, strong goodness.

“You have a really strange way of showing it. You’re never around when I need you anymore,” she says, pulling vases out of one of the bags. “I’ve been having a centerpiece crisis, and you are nowhere to be found. Ever.”

I rub the back of my neck with one hand, all the while keeping a death grip on my latte with the other. “Things have been a little crazy.”

“Too crazy to be there for your only sister when her wedding is just weeks away?”

“I’m sorry, Kate,” I say. And I am. As much as I am over all of this (they’ve been engaged for so long I was starting to just assume they were married by law by now).

“Which vase looks better? There’s going to be peonies in them.”

My eyes bounce between the white vase and the blush pink one. “What color are the peonies?” I ask.

“Whitish pink I think.”

“I like both. Switch them up, every other table. And put the pinker flowers in the white vases.”

“See! This is why I need my big sister. Where would I be without you?” Kate plops down on the bed with me.

Suddenly, I burst into tears.

“I know, I know. You’ve been kind of a lousy sister. But it’s okay, I forgive you, as usual,” Kate pets my hair back from my face.

“No, it’s not that!” I blubber. “And excuse you, by the way. I have a life you know.”

“A life where you forget about your sister. I’m aware.”

I shove up from the bed and set my coffee down, spilling even more of it on my poor book.

“I’ve been lying to you!”

Kate blinks. “And that is supposed to make things better how?”

I know I sound like a crazy person but after everything I have been through, the dam is breaking, and the flood is unstoppable.

“The reason that Callum and I stayed in touch and started ‘dating’,” I put the word in air quotes. “Isn’t just because I happened to bid on him at the auction in Vegas and he happened to be my boss. We also got married.”

“Wait, what?” Kate also stands up, her mouth on the floor. “When?”

“In Vegas.”

“Where?”

“Some little pop-up chapel.”

“And it’s real?”

I nod. “We have the papers to prove it. We didn’t think it was. It wasn’t Elvis.”

Kate covers her face with her hands. “So, you’re married. To your boss who you met in Vegas during MY bachelorette party.”

I nod again and somehow, I feel infinitely better.

Enough though that I smile. “My God, Kate. You have no idea how good it feels to tell you that. And now we can talk about it, finally. About how I married him for real on accident and we haven’t broken it off because he has a twin brother and his dad is only handing the company down to one son not both and he wants that son to be married and–”

“How dare you?” Kate cuts me off and I turn to her. Her words are deep and accusatory, and her eyes are on fire.

“How dare I what?” I ask.

“How dare you be so selfish?!”

I stop, wiping the snot from my nose that’s making its way down to my upper lip. “Selfish? What are you talking about?”

With that, Kate throws her hands up incredulously.

“Everything is about you! I pay for a trip to Vegas and all you want to do is hang out by the pool. So, what do I, your loving baby sister do? I make the night about you. I dress you up, I get you drunk, I take you out. I even get you a date with a very hot man. But no. That’s not enough.

You have to go and marry him. I’m supposed to be the one getting married. ME!”

“Are you completely batshit crazy?” I ask and it’s an honest question.

“You know, this is so like you,” Kate says with a bitter laugh.

“How’s that?”

“You always have to be the center of attention. The loved one.”

This time, I am the one laughing. “You are crazy, you know that? I have spent my entire life in your shadow, helping you, revolving my life around YOU. Of course you would make this crisis about you too.”

“The only crisis,” Kate says as she shoves the vases back in the bag. “Is that I am getting married and my maid of honor is too busy lighting her life on fire to notice!”

“Yes, you’re right,” I shout back, following her to the door.

“I am too busy getting drunk at your bachelorette because you bought me nine hundred drinks and too busy going out with men I never wanted to go out with and too busy getting married to my boss all because of YOU to make the rest of my life also about YOU. Oh, and you know what else?”

“What?” she snaps, ripping the front door open and turning to face me.

“I’m pregnant!” I say before slamming the door in my sister’s face.