Page 13 of Brewer Family Collection, Part 1

Blakely

I rinse my toothbrush and look at my reflection.

My hair is ratty, matted in places by what I’m hoping is ice cream. Eye makeup is smeared across my face. The evidence of red lipstick is hidden on an earlobe.

I can’t decide if it looks like I’ve had a good night or if I was mauled by a bear. A very large, muscled, handsome bear. Ugh .

“How do you run off and get married after dinner, Blakely?” I shut off the tap. “Marriage isn’t an after-dinner snack.” I set the toothbrush in the travel case. “Renn might be a snack, but marriage is not.”

I groan, mentally lambasting myself for making light of the situation. Because light, it is not.

There must be something no one has caught—a lie, a misstep in the paperwork, some freaking reason two people can’t just accidentally get married . This is Vegas, for Pete’s sake. Doesn’t this happen all the time ?

Ella comes in, offering me a pain reliever and a sports drink. “Here. This will help.”

“Thanks.” I toss the pill in my mouth. The drink makes me want to hurl when it splashes into my stomach.

Ella runs a bath, adding a squirt of shampoo for bubbles. “Okay, this feels like a rough start to the day, I’m sure. But this isn’t the end of the world.”

“Easy for you to say. Your name isn’t on the front page of Exposé. Again .”

Memories of the first time my name was in bold lettering online have me gripping the tub's edge to steady myself.

“I agree—this isn’t a best-case scenario,” she says. “But this isn’t Edward we’re dealing with. Renn isn’t feeding the tabloids stories to distract them from his bullshit. It’s not the same thing.”

I exhale a shaking breath. “It doesn’t matter.

The magazines don’t care about the truth.

They blamed me for crashing Edward’s car, trashing his house, and trying to blackmail him for cash.

” Bile creeps up my throat. “Do you think there’s a chance they aren’t going to call me a gold digger again? If so, you’re being naive.”

“Get in the bath. Everything is better in the bath.” She turns her back to give me some privacy. “Besides, you stink.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“How much did you drink last night?”

I shed the robe and what’s left of my bra. Then I sink into the tub. “Enough to get married.”

Ella pulls the footstool across the room and sits.

The heat of the water soothes my stomach and helps clear some of the funk from my head. I take my loofah and clean the melted ice cream from my skin.

“You’re sure it’s a real marriage?” I ask, still in shock.

“I’m sure, friend. Here.” She clicks around on her phone and then hands it to me. “There are pictures. Maybe if you look at them, it’ll help trigger your memory.”

I take the device warily after drying my hands on a towel.

Resting my pulsing head against the bath pillow, I look at the images from last night. In the first picture, we’re standing in a line.

“Hey, I remember this. There was a couple in front of us—Oliver and Izzy.” My jaw drops, and I look at Ella. “How do I remember two strangers’ names and not my wedding?”

She shrugs.

“Oliver kept taking selfies. He was adorable. And I think they took a picture of us? Maybe? I can’t remember.” I swipe to another image. “Don’t remember that. Or that,” I say, swiping again.

I stop on a picture of Renn and me in front of a black-haired, lip-curled man holding a book—a Bible, to be exact.

Renn has his arms around my waist, his hands locked at the small of my back. I have no idea what he’s saying, but my face is scrunched in a laugh that makes me smile. The way he’s looking at me makes my chest tighten.

His eyes are bright and pinched at the corners. His smile stretches across his face. There’s a gentleness in his hard exterior, happiness—a carefree vibe in his features. Oh, Renn. What did we do?

“Do you remember that?” Ella asks softly.

I shake my head. I wish I did .

I give her phone back to her. “So how pissed is Brock?”

“Oh, he’s livid. He was ready to tear Renn’s limbs off and beat him with them.”

Yikes .

“But don’t worry about him, Blakely. You need to worry about yourself and what you need to do. Brock’s a big boy. He’ll deal with this—you know that. He’s always on your side.”

I shift my gaze away from her.

That’s easy for her to say—to not worry about my brother.

But she wasn’t there when the fallout of dating Edward landed partially on Brock.

She didn’t watch him feel handcuffed by the situation, wanting desperately to help me but feeling the pressure from his team and managers not to get too publicly involved.

It was almost as hard on him as it was for me. And I still feel terrible about that.

“I don’t want this to affect him,” I say.

She smiles. “I think that’s the last thing he’s worried about this morning.”

I press my fingertips against my eyelids and blow out a breath.

“What do you want to do?” Ella asks. “We need a game plan. I’m here to ride this out with you, but I need to know what way we’re rolling with it so I can prepare for battle.”

My lips quiver. This sucks so bad. But at least Ella is here.

“Nope. Don’t start crying,” she says. “I swear to all that’s holy that if you make me get emotional about this, I’ll never forgive you.”

I laugh, choking back the sob that wants to escape. Thanks, tequila .

“Do you think you need an attorney?” she asks. “I can call my dad and see if he can help us find one. He usually knows someone who knows someone.”

“I don’t need an attorney … right?” Do I ? “I just want to get this thing annulled as quickly and quietly as possible. It’s not like we’re really married.”

Ella nods as if she’s just going along with me.

“Look up annulments—or hell, canceling a marriage license,” I say. “There has to be a way for people who wake up married in Vegas to end it. This has to happen all the time.”

“Uh-huh.” She types into her phone. “I hope you’re right.”

I lay my head back and close my eyes.

Thankfully, my stomach has settled. The ache in my head isn’t as sharp as when I woke up. But the stress in my neck that I managed to shed last night is back—with a vengeance.

I’m married. I snort. This is not the birthday memory I wanted to make.

“All right,” Ella says. “There are two types of marriages you can annul in Vegas. One is void marriages and the other is voidable marriages .”

“Gimme. How do I void this?”

“You don’t have a void marriage because neither of you were already married, and you aren’t closely related.”

I make a face. “Nope. We’re not. What’s the other kind?”

“ Voidable marriages are those without consent if under age, lack of understanding, mental incompetence, and the existence of fraud.”

I sit up and turn off the tap. Water sloshes around me. “ That’s it . Lack of understanding. Clearly, we didn’t know what we were doing.”

Relief floods through me. My shoulders slump. Thank God for the internet .

“Not so fast,” Ella says, grimacing. “Keep in mind that I’m on a random lawyer’s website, okay? So I could be wrong. He could be wrong for all I know. But I think this says that if you have a spur-of-the-moment wedding and regret it, that’s hard to prove in court.”

“ In court ? I don’t want this going to court.”

She sets the phone on her lap and winces. “It looks like the fastest you can get this taken care of is one to three weeks— if you can get it annulled.”

“And what if we can’t?”

“Then you have to get a divorce.”

I stare at my friend as if she will suddenly spit out the answers I want to hear—that this will be quick, easy, and quiet. But she fails me.

No, I failed me .

This is no one’s fault but my own. And as bad as this will suck for me, I know it will suck for Renn even more. There goes his good boy clause .

The only way out of this is to get to the courthouse. The sooner we start the dissolution of our accidental marriage, the sooner it’s over. Because if I know one thing, I know this—I don’t want to be Mrs. Brewer.

I can’t be Mrs. Brewer.

Tears fill my eyes once again.

There’s no way to escape this. Things will get progressively worse as the hours, and days, go on. And I have no idea what it will do to Renn or his family’s business deal, but I’m sure it’s not good for them, either.

Oh, Blakely. How do you get into these things?

I promised I’d do better. For me. Yet here we are.

I married a proverbial bachelor, one of a few men more popular than Edward DiNozzo. It doesn’t matter that Renn is a good friend or that he’s been nothing but kind to me. Too much is on the line. He’ll have no choice but to save himself.

And I can’t blame him.

There’s little chance we end up anything more than enemies when this is over . We might as well get it over with as quickly as possible.

“Fine,” I say, lifting my chin. “I guess I get cleaned up, get dressed, and go file the papers because, either way, this has to end.”

Renn

I sit on the bed and hold my head in my hands.

Dammit, Renn.

My lungs fill with air, doing their job and keeping me alive. But, somehow, it doesn’t feel like I’m breathing.

I jump back to my feet and pace across the room.

The enormity of the situation hangs over my head— I married Blakely Evans last night . The burden of the event sits heavily on my shoulders— it was my job to protect her . The responsibility for the fallout lands squarely on me— and I don’t know what the fuck to do .

And for the first time in my life, I care .

I go back and forth across the bedroom, my footsteps falling hard against the floor.

When I usually wake up in some kind of scandal, I take a shower and have breakfast—an omelet, if I can find one. Festering bullshit doesn’t bother me. There are always two sides to every story, but I don’t often care if my side is told. No one listens, anyway.