The Pact

by Max Monroe

  She nods then, studying me closely, and a tiny, breathtaking smile lights her up from her smiling mouth to her now sparkling eyes.

  “Okay, then,” front desk man chirps, spinning in a circle and grabbing some forms from a tray. “Just fill these puppies in with the important information, and I’ll get it all typed up and ready to go.” He leans forward and points to the papers. “See here? This is the section where you pick the flowers and cake flavor, okay? They’re all labeled up there.”

  “Great,” Daisy replies, taking the forms from his hands, placing them on one of the waiting clipboards from the counter, and grabbing a pen to fill everything out. I follow her to the other side of the room as she takes a seat in a chair and starts writing. I shamelessly watch over her shoulder.

  Daisy Marie Diaz. Twenty-nine years old. Birthday December 25.

  “Christmas baby, huh?”

  She laughs a little. “So the city of Vancouver tells me.”

  The city of Vancouver tells her? Not her parents? Interesting.

  Done with her information, she offers the clipboard to me, where I quickly scribble down my information. It’s nothing too thorough—just very basic information and a home address.

  When I’m done, I get up and walk the clipboard back over to the counter, carefully checking the sheet to see which bouquet she’s selected.

  Number 2A.

  Big, bright Gerbera daisies all packed together in an overcrowded cluster. Very interesting. I really thought she’d go for one of the more refined sets of delicate whites and pinks, but then again, I’m finding that this woman never hesitates to surprise me.

  Settling the clipboard onto the desk, I turn and head back in her direction, where she’s no longer sitting in the chairs in which I left her. Instead, she’s up and moving.

  She waves frantic hands at her face, the crimson red wave of her anxiety cascading off her cheeks and down the line of her neck, and I step back as her red-tipped fingers swing out and almost hit me in the face.

  “Okay. Okay,” she repeats to herself, spinning in the world’s tiniest circle. “Everything is fine. This is no big deal. People do crazy things like this all the time for far less rational reasons, and I’m just…taking care of business. Handling my shit. Making life my bitch. I can do this.”

  I step back and out of the way as she does some sort of power-skip, half-jump thing and lands on her toes. My eyebrows lift slightly, but I don’t say anything else. I’m not even sure there’s anything that can be said to calm her down at this point.

  That’s not entirely true. You could tell her she doesn’t have to do this. That life happens for reasons, and maybe it’ll turn out to be a good thing that her visa expired. My stomach flips in protest, and I shake my head slightly to clear it. No, we’re doing the right thing. Saving her career. Her future. It’s not a big deal.

  I’m a practical guy, rationality and logic always the foundation for my decisions. A guy like me doesn’t do impulsive shit unless it serves an actual purpose. And this, obviously, serves a very important purpose.

  Actually, you don’t do impulsive shit, period.

  I can’t deny this is, hands down, the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done in my life. My brothers would certainly lose their fucking minds if they were here to witness it.

  But they’re not here, and according to Ty’s last update, they’re at some bar with beer pong tables and cocktail waitresses that make Hooters’ tight outfits look prim and proper. I know this because he sent me a photo of an oblivious and blindfolded Jude, smiling toward the camera, while two of the scantily clad cocktail waitresses stood beside him.

  Jude would be at risk for a fucking stroke if he found out you were getting married before him…

  I almost start to marinate in that thought and allow the reality to sink in, but the doors to the chapel swing open so dramatically they hit the wall with a shocking bang. Instantly, a very broad-shouldered man wearing a white halter top dress and a face full of show makeup steps into the space.

  “Oh my God,” Daisy whispers, her voice rising at the very end to an almost silent shriek. “Is that…uh…Marilyn Monroe?”

  I almost snort, but in deference to her obvious freak-out, I don’t. One thing is for sure, though, that is most certainly not Marilyn Monroe. But it’s a pretty damn good showing by a man trying to look like her, I have to admit.

  “Daisy Diaz and Flynn Winslow?” Fake Marilyn calls out with a movie-star smile and flutter of eyelashes, and Daisy’s hand shoots out and grabs me by the forearm, her fingernails digging into my skin, even through the material of my tux jacket.

  “Us? Already?” Her eyebrows practically shoot up past her hairline. “But you just handed in the clipboard, like, a second ago. What kind of operation are they running here?”

  I can’t help but chuckle. “Seems like a quick one.”

  Daisy’s glare is pointed and strong and oh-so amusing.

  “Ready?” I ask with a simplicity the two of us know isn’t all that simple.

  She takes a moment of consideration, but it’s not more than a few seconds before she’s nodding and taking me by the arm to lead us toward Marilyn. “That’s us.”

  “Great,” Marilyn coos, shooting us a wink before waving a hand and escorting us through the doors to the chapel. “Let’s do it.”

  The door bobs and bounces against itself as I reach out to catch it without pushing through. Instead, I turn to Daisy with a raise of my eyebrows. You sure about this?

  Her words are a declaration—and the first step in a whole new part of our lives. “Let’s do it.”

  For better or for worse and until Daisy gets a green card, Mr. and Mrs. Winslow, here we come.

  Daisy

  Flynn tosses the keys to his motorcycle into the bowl beside the door and walks down the hall, leaving me to follow. I watch silently as he puts down the duffel bag from his bike that houses our normal clothes and then works off the tie at his neck. His strong shoulders work to take off his tuxedo jacket, and I bite my lip to stop my mouth’s nervous quiver when he reaches back to ruffle the hair at the back of his head with long, tanned fingers.

  And I thought he looked good in leather. This sophisticated tux look takes Flynn Winslow’s hotness to a whole new level. It’s almost a shame it’s a rental that will have to be returned.

  You do realize that this marriage is fake, right? You’re not going to, like, move in with him and pop out 2.5 kids…

  His house is dark, but lights set to motion sensors illuminate each space as we move through it. First, down a long, large, high-ceilinged hallway, and then through a living room with modern, dark-green velvet sofas, and finally into a huge kitchen, set against a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and a terracescape in the backyard. Even outside, lights begin to dot the hillside as Flynn walks in front of the windows.

  Wow. This place is… Well, it’s not my dinky apartment in LA, that’s for sure. It’s a place for someone with money.

  The silence, for the first time all night, is heavy. It’s laden with things unsaid—things I’m afraid to say—and even as I chip away at the block with my mental ice pick, I’m having the damnedest time trying to find some words to say.

  I mean…what do you say in this situation? When you find yourself at the remote house of your new husband, about whom you know next to nothing?

  “Do you…do you have a shirt I could sleep in, maybe?”

  Oh God. I’m pretty sure that’s not it.

  Under normal circumstances, with the men of my past, I might actually have the opportunity to be embarrassed. To wonder what he’s thinking as he stares at me in sheer disbelief. But not with Flynn. No. He turns without a word and walks down the hall. And, yeah, it’s things like that that let me know how wrong I am every time I try to convince myself that anything about what I’ve just done is normal.

  That’s my husband. And I don’t have a freaking clue what he’s going to do from one moment to the next. For the love of God, I kissed that
man, not even an hour ago, after promising ourselves to each other until one of us reaches our ultimate demise.

  Drag Marilyn fanned herself and asked someone for a glass of water, and all I could do was stare into the deep ocean of his eyes and wait for a tidal wave to knock me out of my misery.

  The kiss…it was powerful. Gravity shifting. So fucking exceptional that my lips have yet to stop tingling.

  You just need to go to bed. Get your head right. Calm down, for Pete’s sake.

  For now, though, while I wait on him to return with either a shirt or a weapon of some sort, I stand there swaying on my feet and survey the modern interior of his desert home. It’s filled with cool concrete on the floors and counters, and the black cabinets look perfectly in place. It’s not my personal taste, but as a designer, I can appreciate the intention of it and how good it looks juxtaposed against the heated backdrop of sand and shrub.

  His footsteps are quiet, so I don’t hear him coming back until he’s there, exiting the mouth of the hallway and holding out a neatly folded T-shirt for me to take, his own now noticeably missing. I accept it gratefully, letting the folds fall open in front of me as I pull it toward myself and swallow hard at the ripple of his well-defined muscles.

  The borrowed shirt is huge in comparison to my small frame, and for the first time since I wrapped my arms around him on the motorcycle leaving the Wynn, I’m reminded just how large he actually is.

  “Thank you,” I murmur.

  “You’re welcome.” The sound of his deep voice on those two simple words slides over my skin like a warm wind. I never realized how much I’m used to hearing people babble like me. Nevertheless, the simple exchange feels as if it unlocks the vise around my throat, and finally, I explode all over the room with hundreds of words.

  “I’m sorry if I’m getting in the way of your plans. Surely you had things you intended to do before I asked you to take me on a wild ride. If you need to get back to them, I completely understand, you know? I’m…well, I’ll be fine, and now that we’re married—ha!—I guess I need to figure out what that means for what I need to do with Immigration.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Okay, good. I mean, not good. None of this is good. It’s…well, it’s crazy, is what it is! I married you—a complete stranger—with Marilyn Monroe as the officiant. If that’s not worthy of a little bit of a freak-out, I don’t know what is. Liberace, sure, I could see that. But Marilyn Monroe as a member of the clergy? Seems like a stretch, you know?”

  He raises his eyebrows but, by and large, doesn’t do anything else other than grab a glass from the cabinet beside the sink and turn on the tap to fill it halfway with water.

  I swallow thickly as he turns his shirtless back to the counter to take a swig. When he tips his head forward again, he holds out the glass in offering.

  I almost wheeze. “Oh, no. Thank you, but no. I don’t want to take your water.”

  He smirks then, turning around and pulling another glass from the cabinet. Oh, right. He was offering to get me my own, not to meet in the middle of the noodle like we’re fucking Lady and the Tramp.

  Placing the glass under the faucet, he fills it until it’s about an inch from the top and then holds it out to me. I tuck his T-shirt to my chest and reach out to take it.

  “Thanks. Really. For all of this. You’ve been incredibly patient with me tonight, and I know that’s not the easiest task under the circumstances.” I laugh almost manically again. “I, um, think I’ll just take this to bed with me. Try to get some sleep if that’s all right.”

  He jerks up his chin, and I nod. “Um. Sorry, but, uh, which bedroom?”

  “Second door on the left, bathroom is in the hall.”

  “Great. That’s…great. Okay, well, thanks again. And goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” he replies softly, so softly I almost don’t even hear him.

  I take a hugely deep breath as I spin around and only let it out when I’m safely tucked into the hallway bathroom with the door shut and locked behind me. I set my glass on the counter and look at myself in the mirror, and for the briefest of moments, I don’t even recognize any of my features. My eyes are wide and bright, and my hair is wild in a way I never let it get. I suppose, however, that messy hair is to be expected after going on an unexpected joyride on a motorcycle.

  I look down at the gold wedding band on my left ring finger and spin it around a few times with my thumb.

  I’m married. Freaking legally bound to a man whose middle name could be Herbert for all I know. Oh God, what if it’s Muriel like Chandler on Friends?

  Jesus, Daisy, like that’s what matters at this stage in the game. You got married. Pretty sure his middle name and whether it’s mockable aren’t what’s important here.

  “Okay, relax. This is…good. We’re well on our way to solving this whole visa debacle, and tomorrow morning, I’ll go back to reality and work and figure out all the details. This will just be a fun night that I look back on and tell my grandkids—only after their grandfather has passed. Just in case he’s got a hair trigger about divorcing a crazy lady. Right? Right. So just…wash your face, Daisy,” I tell myself in the mirror like a freak. “Wash your face and go to bed. Sleep it off.”

  I lean back off the counter and shake out my arms for good measure. Surely the vibration will help with letting all the anxious juju make its way out through the ends of my fingers.

  Quick and efficient, like a trained soldier, I set out to follow my own orders. A quick rinse of my face, a brush of my teeth with my own finger, a little potty break, a quick change into—swallow—Flynn’s large, loose T-shirt, and a run of my fingers through my hair, and I’m ready for bed.

  I click off the lights first before opening the door a crack and peeking out into the hallway, my own discarded rental dress clutched to my chest. It’s dark and quiet, and after a brief surveillance to make sure that’s not going to change, I open the door the rest of the way and prance toward the bedroom on ninja-like feet. To be honest, I imagine I look a little bit more like the Grinch as he prepares to steal Christmas than anything else, but hell, it makes me feel better, so I go with it.

  Safely in the bedroom, I shut the door behind myself with a soft click and step back to look at it, tossing my dress on a high-backed chair to the side. I never take my eyes off the door. It’s completely inanimate, and yet, it seems to say so many things.

  I jump forward quickly and engage the lock brusquely before breaking into a jog for the bed. The sooner I’m in and tucked under those covers, the sooner I can fall asleep, which, ultimately, means I’ll be able to let all of this go for a short period of time and just…rest.

  Recharge. Reset. Recalibrate.

  I shuffle and wiggle and scoot until nothing but my chin sticks out from the thick white comforter, my two eyes blinking rapidly in the silent darkness.

  There is no city out the window, no hustle and bustle of the freeway just beyond the fence behind my apartment building—only the great, expansive nothingness of the desert and beyond.

  I roll to the side and tuck my head in the pillow, hoping to smother some of my unrelenting thoughts.

  Married, Daisy. You’re married.

  I shake my head to, I don’t know, hopefully cause some minor brain trauma so the little cerebral workers shut things down for the night, but every time I try to close my eyes, they just pop back open like they’re spring-loaded.

  I do an alligator death roll, spinning and spinning until the sheets are so tangled around me, I don’t know that I’ll ever get free.

  “Well, this is good,” I murmur softly to myself, wrestling my limbs until I finally get my arms free and flop them on top of the covers.

  God. Now I’m hot. Like, fucking swampy, to be honest. Why, why, why didn’t I bring my glass of water to bed with me? Whyyy did I leave it in the bathroom?

  “Ugh,” I huff, pulling the covers down and off me completely while my internal oven cranks up the temperature to 500. For the l
ove of everything, my organs will never survive this roasting.

  I sigh. Sit up. Stare at the door.

  Surely Flynn’s gone to bed now, right? I could just sneak back into the bathroom, grab my glass, fill it up one or five times, and that’ll be that. A gulp of some H2O and back to bed.

  The fact that you’re trying to avoid your husband on your wedding night is quite the turn of events…

  On a sigh, I shove the covers down to the end of the bed and turn my body so that my feet dangle off the edge. I crane my neck and strain my ears to hear anything outside of the bedroom—any signs of life—but as hard as I try, I can’t hear anything at all.

  Just go, you lunatic. The night can’t get any weirder than it already is.

  Moving boldly, I jump down from the bed and take off on another Jim Carrey in a green suit style run for the door. I unlock it, open it, peek outside, and then creep my way to the bathroom swiftly. I shut the door, lock it behind me, and then flick on the lights only to find my glass of water is…gone.

  Nooo. Jesus, where did it go? Don’t tell me this place is like the Beast’s castle, and candlesticks are doing some light housekeeping in the dark of night.

  Shit. I’m going to have to go back to the kitchen. Whipping out my virtual UNO reverse card, I exit the bathroom with the same stealth and speed with which I entered and head down the hallway toward the land of concrete and black cupboards.

  The lights are all out, and the motion sensors must have a timer or something, because I’m left to the safety of the darkness as I make it into the kitchen, grab a glass from the cabinet I watched him get it out of before, and fill up my glass at the sink.

  I put it to my lips, take a hard swig, and then settle my frantic hips against the counter with a deep sigh.

  “Can’t sleep?” a rough, thick voice says from the darkened breakfast nook at the side of the kitchen. The jump it produces from me rivals that of Earvin Johnson, the Magic man himself.

  “Holy shit,” I snap, a hand to my chest as I gasp for breath. Frankly, it’s nothing short of a miracle that there’s not shattered drinking glass fucking everywhere. “You’re still up.”