Page 20

Present

Matty and I were standing on opposite sides of the hallway, staring at each other. No words have been exchanged since he called me his wife in front of our friends.

You’re married?

How long has this been going on?

Didn’t I ask you if you had a secret husband?

Why the hell didn’t you tell me?

Were you trying to get me involved in a threesome?

Why wasn’t I invited to the wedding?

Erik and Sienna’s questions raced through my mind as I leaned against the wall and rested my head against it. What had we done? Every single question they had was valid, I just wasn’t able to answer any of them until I figured out the answer myself. That meant having a conversation with Matty, one I’d been expertly avoiding over the last three months in the hopes it would go away entirely.

I rolled my head to the side, checking the hotel hallway was clear. There was no one around, everyone was down in the ballroom, yet I was doing everything in my power to delay this conversation.

When I looked over at Matty, he ran a nervous hand through his hair, smiling. Clearly, he wanted me to talk first. What the heck did he want me to say? This entire thing felt ridiculous and not how I ever thought my life would go. Unwilling to talk to my own husband.

My husband.

Matty was apparently my life partner, and we hadn’t even had sex yet. Hell, just twenty minutes ago, Sienna was trying to convince me I should be trying to get over him, and I was almost on board with it.

“So, you’re my husband?”

What else could I say to break the ice between us? The entire idea made my head spin. A husband was supposed to be devoted to you, and although he kept trying to convince me he was, he was having a kid with someone else. Someone I thought he was engaged to.

“And you’re my wife.”

I swallowed down the disappointment. It felt so cheap being called his wife right now. When I thought about what my wedding would be like as a teenager, I always imagined marrying my best friend, and although that was Matty, it was never on a drunken night out.

“So we did actually get married in Vegas?”

Matty looked up with furrowed brows.

“Did you forget? Because it’s all I’ve been thinking about since the moment we said, ‘I do.’”

I shook my head, unwilling to tell him the truth. He couldn’t know that I’d been thinking about it too. That I was too afraid to have an actual conversation with him in case it wasn’t. Or worse, it was and he needed to divorce me so he could marry the true love of his life, Olana. Pain prickled in the back of my eyes as I tried so hard to hold back the tears.

That night was still the best night of my life, even if it ended so terribly. I’d felt like I was flying high, and nothing could bring me down. I admitted I was in love with my best friend and married him that night. How foolish I was to believe that would be our happily ever after?

I raised my hand limply. “I hadn’t forgotten. It’s just that we hadn’t talked about it.”

“Well, we can talk about it right now. We got married in Vegas, and I never got you that ring.” He laughed in a bitter and almost sarcastic kind of way. “You left the morning after before I could even talk to you, and then you proceeded to avoid me at every single opportunity. Even at the Crushers game when I saw you, I thought we could talk about it, but you told me you were dating Erik. I’m still not convinced it’s real.” He mulled it over for a second. “Although, he did have a pretty visceral reaction to the news that you were married, so there must have been something there.”

Was he trying to poke the bear with that statement? I shook my head, not even wanting to mention Olana. We’d just get into a fight, and I needed to understand what was going on with this marriage before I dealt with anything else.

“Are you sure it’s legit?”

“What? Our marriage?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I thought those places were kind of a joke.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Glad you think that the idea of marrying me is hilarious.”

I held my breath, not wanting to tell him how I truly felt. Nothing about Matty was a joke.

“No. you’re not going to make this a sob story about you. This is a legitimate question. We said our vows in front of a Britney Spears impersonator who sang “Toxic” straight after we…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Even talking about touching Matty made me sad, knowing I’d never get the opportunity to do it again.

“Kissed.” His brow lifted as though he was trying to cover the smirk that was threatening to draw across his face. “Believe me, those marriages are real.” He pushed himself off the wall and strolled over to my side.

Being this close to Matty and not wanting to kiss him was becoming a real problem, so I trained my gaze to the portrait in front of me.

“Initially, I didn’t do anything because I thought we could talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

He looked at me sheepishly, almost shy about the answer. “Whether or not you wanted to stay married to me. For the record, I’m game.”

I rolled my eyes and huffed out a breath. “I think you know the answer to that without asking. You have Olana.”

“Olana and I broke up. We haven’t been together since the end of last year.”

“I thought you were eng—” I shook my head. Nothing made sense, but I was coming to the conclusion that little did these days. I had so many questions, but Matty raised his hand, stopping me from asking any of them.

“Olana’s not important right now. What’s important is that you’re my wife, and I’d like to keep it that way, but I’m feeling some reservations from your side.”

“And I’m just asking if you’re sure it definitely counts, because I’m not.”

He shrugged. “Honestly, I thought it was wiped. I deleted all traces of our wedding on their database after you told me you were official with Erik. Unfortunately, I’ve now learned that Las Vegas weddings also have a paper trail, one that makes them pretty unhackable.”

“How is that possible? If you deleted it from the register, then there’s nothing to see.”

“Except for the paper version, which is then fed into a country-wide system over the next couple of months, and I can’t hack the government websites. Not again, and not without getting in major trouble.”

“Then we need to get a divorce as soon as possible.” I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t want to be with Matty like this. As a mistake, and certainly not as the other woman taking him away from his child. That seemed so beyond who I was.

“Aw, Wifey. That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. Maybe I could take you to one of these hotel rooms and see if I can change your mind?” The words were half-hearted as he said them. Almost as if he knew what I was going to say.

“Not interested, and don’t call me wifey.”

“Even if it’s the truth?”

“Especially if it’s the truth. I don’t want this getting out. What would my mom think?”

“Well, I’d hope she’d think we were a good match, but don’t worry, I get it. I thought you’d say you wanted a divorce, so I figured I’d humor you and look into it. Unfortunately, separating isn’t a quick process.”

“Why not? Can’t we just sign off on papers?”

“Well, we aren’t allowed to dissolve the wedding before six months of the date it occurred.”

“Under any circumstance?”

He nodded.

I narrowed my eyes, taking him in again. “But we were drunk out of our minds. Surely, anything we sign during that time doesn’t count?”

“Please, Britt. Don’t act like this was a drunken mistake between us, because I was sober enough to know that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you,” he stated, but I had no idea what he was trying to prove. He’d said these things before, but that didn’t negate the fact that it couldn’t happen. “Besides, they don’t care about our intoxication levels. We signed it and kissed to seal the deal.”

I pursed my lips and tried to think of any loophole I could. “But we didn’t consummate it.”

He chuckled. “I’m pretty sure we consummated something.”

“No. We didn’t have sex.” Yeah, I brought it up because I was pissed off. I have had a husband for the better part of three months, and I was still going without.

“Maybe not, but I did eat your pussy, then slide my dick in your juices before coming in your mouth.”

My body shivered and my center warmed.

Aroused.

That was what it was. I was aroused.

I bit my tongue, holding back my frustration. This entire scenario was ridiculous.

“I’ve been looking into it, and there are a couple of things we have to do to get this thing annulled.”

I waved my hands in his face. “If you can hack into the database, then why do we have to do anything at all? Can’t you just change the status while you’re in there?”

“Like I said, it’s connected to a bunch of different databases, which would involve a hell of a lot of hacking into government websites. As much as I enjoy doing that, I enjoy my freedom even more.”

“Selfish,” I said sarcastically.

I raised my brow, waiting for him to continue.

“The first thing we need to do is wait. Six months. That’s it.”

I thought about it for a second. “Well, I guess that’s not too bad.” I raised my hand and counted with my fingers. “The wedding was in August. It’s November now. It might take them three months to process, so surely, we could start it all off and send the papers out now?”

Matty hummed out. “Mm-hm. Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Sadly, it’s not that simple because I need the paperwork.”

“You mean the marriage certificate?” He nodded. “Don’t you have it? I thought you took it after the ceremony?”

He shook his head. “No. I didn’t want to lose it, so I arranged for it to get mailed out. I thought maybe I’d had a copy mailed to you too. Maybe to your parents’ house?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Believe me, my mom would have told me if I had.” There was a pause in the conversation as I thought about the implication of his words. “Wait. Is that your way of telling me that we don’t have any documentation of the actual wedding itself?”

“Oh, no. There’s documentation. I just don’t have my hands on it.”

“Why not?”

“I guess because I was only allowed to send the documentation to the registered address on my driver’s license.”

“Okay. So it’s at your home?”

He winced at the word. “Wouldn’t call it that, but yeah.”

“Well then go and get it. Once you have it, we’ll be able to start the divorce.”

“Yes, we would. However, getting that piece of paper is proving to be a little more difficult than expected.”

I raised a brow. He hesitated before rolling to his shoulder so he was looking at me. Face-to-face, this was the closest we’d been since that fateful night, and I hated that I wanted to swallow the distance between us and fall into his arms.

“I don’t know if you remember anything I told you about my relationship with my dad.”

“You’ve barely mentioned him,” I stated, but wasn’t entirely sure if it was the truth. My head was spinning with so much information I couldn’t think clearly. “I think you said once you hadn’t spoken to him in a while.”

“Sounds about right,” he mumbled. “We don’t have the best relationship.”

“Does he have the marriage certificate?”

“Yeah.”

“And he won’t just give it back to you?”

“He will, but just like the Las Vegas government, he has stipulations.”

“Which are?”

“He wants to meet you.”

I scrunched my nose. “Me?”

Matty shrugged and looked away. “Because you’re my wife and his daughter-in-law. He came to the game last week, and I’m sure he could tell I’m obsessively in love with you.”

I took in a sharp breath but didn’t know what to say. I really wished he’d stop saying things like that, because it threw me off.

“He won’t give me the paperwork until we’ve had dinner together. Dinner, as in you, me, and him.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. Dinner with Matty’s dad under these circumstances was one of the last things I wanted to do.

Waving my hand in front of me, I tried to think of a different way out of this. “Can’t we just order replacements?”

“We can,” he drawled out. “But the website said it can take anywhere between six to seven months to arrive.”

“Six to seven months?” My heart rate increased. “That’s insane.”

“It’s also the government for you. Apparently, it needs to go through the system before we can request new ones, and I don’t know how long that will take. Could take a week or seven months.”

I huffed out an annoyed breath. What the hell would my parents think if they found out I got married in Vegas? Sam, Max, and Bryce would kill Matty. None of them saw me get married, and it was only now hitting me how sad that was. I just didn’t want to think about this anymore.

“Unfortunately,” Matty continued, “that doesn’t include actually filing for the divorce, which can take at least six months to process.”

The timeline was adding up in my head, and I didn’t like the answer. This could go on for a year if we didn’t get it started soon. The visuals of a family photo shoot were going through my head, taunting me into a migraine. Matty in the middle with his child on his lap while Olana and I stood on either side.

What in the fresh hell?

I didn’t want that.

This couldn’t be happening. Wife and stepmother. My first marriage would be finished before I started my first official job.

“This is terrible.” I ran a hand across my face and groaned. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t believe I let my heart do the thinking that night in Vegas. I knew it was too good to be true at the time, but I still went through with it. I should’ve protected myself better.

Silence stretched between us. There wasn’t much more we could say to each other. We were at an impasse. We’d made a huge mistake, gotten married after seeing our friends’ wedding, and now we would have to face the consequences. I was a big girl; I could admit when I’d done something wrong, but knowing Matty’s family was now involved just hurt more. Also, knowing I’d never be able to tell mine was heartbreaking.

“Britt, I—”

I raised my hand; I didn’t want to hear any more excuses.

“Please. Stop talking. One dinner.”

“What?”

“I will have one dinner with your father so we can get this stupid marriage certificate and move on. We need to get this wedding annulled before my family can find out. Okay?’”

“Really? Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“What were you expecting me to say?”

He threw me another smirk. “Well, I was hoping we could keep this going, and maybe I could give you a real wedding instead.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“No. I’ve lost my wife, or she gave me up.”

Was he serious? “What did you expect me to say?”

“I don’t know. Maybe don’t worry about your dad, we can try to make things work.”

“You’re delusional.”

“And you married me, so what does that make you.”

“Prone to a heart attack.” He grinned, stepping closer to me and holding his hand out. I looked down at his palm and stepped away. “I don’t know why you’re smiling. We’re in a huge mess, and you seem happy about it.”

“That’s because when I asked you to marry me, I meant it.”

When I said yes, I meant it too, but I wouldn’t divulge that information, as I had no doubts Matty would run with it.

“Set it up.” It looked like he wanted to say something, but when I glared at him in warning, he backed down.

“Okay, well, how about this weekend?”

“Yes.” I turned and strolled down the hall. Matty walked next to me, only occasionally brushing his arm against mine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

My husband.

I shook my head. This was how I was getting my dream guy? No romantic wedding. No dating to woo me. No well-thought-out proposal. And a baby mama. There was no way to come back from this. All Matty and I would ever be was a drunken night in Vegas, and it sucked.

The elevator down to the banquet hall was silent, a stark contrast to last time we were in this position. Interlinked hands with knowing smiles on our faces because we just got married.

We’d had it all, but it crumbled in a few short hours.

“I don’t regret it, you know?” Matty muttered. His hands were in his pockets, and he was looking at his shoes, and when I didn’t respond, he kept going. “If I knew this would be the outcome, I’d still ask you to marry me because being called your husband for even a few months is a privilege. I just wish you’d give me the time to prove how much you mean to me.”

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Thankfully, the elevator doors opened, so I didn’t have to respond to him. It seemed like Matty was hell-bent on burning his future family down to have me. He gave me enough space to walk out on my own, but as I entered the hall and people started noticing me, I almost wished I’d had the extra protection of his body next to mine.

My face heated, and my heart was beating out of my chest. Did everyone know? Had the gossip spread that quickly? It wasn’t like Erik and Sienna were the best at keeping secrets.

Sienna was by my side, hauling me to a quiet corner before I had time to think. Shit. I still hadn’t interviewed the football team yet. How the hell was I supposed to interview Matty now?

“Sienna, I need to speak to—”

“Don’t worry. I got you. I told Dillon that you ate some bad shellfish and that you’d need some cover for the interviews.”

My stomach sank. I didn’t want to give away the opportunity, but my brain was too scrambled to think straight.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“No problem. In return, you’ve got to tell me what the hell happened with Matty?”

My stomach turned. I didn’t want to talk about it. Not here.

I cut a gaze to the rest of the crowd, feeling someone’s eyes on me. Sure enough, Erik was making his way over, and a knot formed in my stomach. What the hell was I supposed to say to him?

My cheeks heated; my breath caught.

Wait a minute. Was I having a panic attack?

I shook my head and as if Sienna knew what was wrong, she looped her arm in mine and directed me to the exit.

“You know what? I’ve got an early morning manicure appointment. I think if I stay here any later, I’m going to have issues making it. Do you want me to drive you home?” she asked. How gallant of her to try to help me out of this situation.

“Yeah, sure.” The idea of staying here was too much to bear. I needed some time to myself, and I needed to get out of here to keep from speaking to Matty again.