by Leddy Harper
And here I was, about to pick out a wedding ring to get married to a guy I barely knew just to make money. I’d say my degree paid off.
When we walked into the other room, we found a man in a tuxedo standing behind a jewelry counter. As I approached, the light reflecting off the brilliant diamonds nearly blinded me, and all I could think about was how at the end of this, I could hock the ring for even more money. It’d come in handy for the actual business I wanted to start.
“Which one do you like?” Connor whispered in my ear.
“Honestly, I don’t care.” And I didn’t, because this wasn’t real to me. And I knew it wasn’t real to him, either. Not for the first time since this whole thing started, I found myself grateful Connor was deemed my soul mate. I would’ve felt awful had they paired me with someone who sincerely wanted a relationship out of this.
Not wasting any time, Connor pointed to the largest princess-cut solitaire with a matching band. Then it was my turn to pick his. Knowing I would benefit from the rings more than he would, I tried to locate the one with the most value, and chose the platinum band with five diamonds decorating the top. The man behind the counter—who hadn’t spoken a single word since we walked in—put the jewelry boxes in a fancy bag and handed it to Connor.
“So…what now?” he asked Larry. “We get married? Is that how this works?”
“You most certainly can if you want. But there’s no rush. You have one year to obtain a marriage license and complete the ceremony to claim the money. If you aren’t married—to each other—in three hundred sixty-five calendar days, then you both forfeit the prize.”
“We don’t need a year.” I tried to swallow down the attitude, but it was difficult. It annoyed me how he spoke to us, as if we needed to hear every single minute detail. We were ready to hop on a plane and tie the knot. Then get home and file for an annulment. Then count the Benjamins. “Just tell us what we need to do, and we’ll do it.”
“Well, first…you have to get a divorce.” His shit-eating grin made me want to throat punch him.
Connor and I both glanced at each other before turning back to Larry. “Divorce? Don’t we have to get married first?”
Larry chuckled and clucked his tongue like we were imbeciles. “I don’t mean a divorce from each other. I mean you, Janelle Brewer, must obtain a legal divorce from your husband.”
I balked and looked around the room, searching for the prankster about to jump out of a corner or something. This had to have been some sort of practical joke. I scoffed and said, “I’m not married.”
“That’s not what your marriage license says.”
The laughter died from my tone, and all I could do was stand and blink rapidly at Larry. I knew it was a bonus to capture the element of surprise on camera, but this was borderline ridiculous. “That has to be a mistake—maybe it’s someone else named Janelle Brewer. I’m sure I can’t be the only one with that name. I think I would know if I was married.”
“Well, when we spoke to your husband, he verified the validity of it.”
“My husband?” My voice didn’t even sound like mine. It came out too high pitched and squeaky.
“Yes, your husband.” He then pointed a small remote over my shoulder, all the while grinning obnoxiously. Out of nowhere, a recording played throughout the room. At the first sound of his voice, I grew lost in it, adrift in the deep waves I used to drown in. The same voice that used to comfort me.
The same voice I’d grown to loathe over the years, aware of the heartbreak it could cause.
“This is Holden York.”
“Mr. York, we just need to verify a few details. We have it that you married Janelle Brewer in July of twenty-twelve in Las Vegas, Nevada. Is that correct?”
A rush of air hit the recording seconds before he said, “Yes, that’s correct.”
“And since then, has the marriage been annulled or dissolved in any way?”
“No. We’re still married.”
More of the recording played around me, but I couldn’t listen to it. Emotions I couldn’t comprehend slammed into me. Anger shook within my chest, while pain and fear knotted in my belly. I knew what he was capable of. And I knew I couldn’t go through it again.
My heart fell to the pit of my stomach, and then the floor opened beneath me. I dropped to my knees in some dramatic, slow-motion stumble, perfect for TV had this not contained the crushing blow of real life. I just sat there, staring off into the distance, desperately trying to absorb the information Larry had just dumped in my lap.
Five years ago…
Vegas…
Holden York…
I didn’t even remember giving him my virginity, but apparently, I’d given him more than that.
And this whole time, he knew.
He knew, and he never told me.
There was only one thing left for me to do…get divorced.
2
Janelle
I shook my arms and took a few deep breaths while I fought to compose myself. I couldn’t believe after all these years I’d find myself standing in front of Holden’s house, the same one he’d bought after graduating from college.
As I stood there, I could almost remember it all like it was yesterday. How we’d gone from being close friends and familiar with one another to ultimate strangers. At the time, I had no idea how to fix it, and now, five years later, I didn’t even know how to talk to him.
I’d rung the bell when I first stepped up to the door, but he hadn’t answered yet, and I started to wonder if he was even home since I’d been waiting for so long. Then again, with all the adrenaline running through me, it could’ve only been five seconds, even though it felt more like five years. Rather than ring the bell again, I knocked—probably a little too impatiently based on the way Holden yanked the door open.
Whatever word he’d readied himself to say fell to the wayside, replaced by widened eyes and a gaping mouth. The same shock he wore on his expression, I felt in my chest, and we both stood there, staring at the other, no words spoken between us.
Even though he’d continued to be Matt’s best friend through the years, I hadn’t seen him much. In fact, it’d been at least three years since we’d been in the same room together—could’ve easily been four. Once upon a time, we used to see each other often, and our conversations were effortless. All that vanished after one senseless night in Vegas—the same night I not only had sex for the first time, but also got married, all without a single recollection of either instance. As if we’d never met before, the man standing in front of me was a stranger. Not only did he feel different, but he looked different as well.
Holden had forever been good looking. Tall and in shape with abs I could trace with my fingertips, longish dark hair that always seemed mussed no matter what style he wore it in, and the most unusual shade of green eyes I’d ever seen—upon close inspection, they appeared to be more of a mixture between slate and hazel, but from a distance, they were a rare, forest green. His skin tone fluctuated depending on the time of year—tan during the summer, and the color of coffee with a lot of milk in the winter, creamy almost.
Yet, the matured version of him caught me completely off guard. I guess I’d expected the same guy from years ago to answer the door, expected the guy I’d left to be the same one I found. But that’s not at all what I got. Still just as tall, he wasn’t quite as lanky as before, his chest had filled out, and his shoulders seemed broader. In front of me stood a man—a grown man—with short, dark-brown hair that curled close to the scalp on the sides, golden skin, and the same hard, chiseled jaw I used to dream about kissing.
“Holden…” It was nothing but a whisper.
He pinched his brows together and squinted at me before glancing over my shoulder and then off to the side, as if checking the street for something or someone. A slight twitch of insecurity immediately struck me, leaving me to wonder if maybe he’d been expecting someone. Another woman perhaps.
Although, that insecurity
lasted all of five seconds. It disappeared when he looked me up and down, practically appraising me, and asked, “What are you doing here?” His voice came out deep, heavy with disgust, the repulsion dripping from each word. It erased the desire coursing through me, acting like a bucket of cold water being splashed in my face.
It reminded me of why I was here in the first place.
I didn’t come to reconcile with my husband—no matter what my unconscious thoughts tried to tell me during sleeping hours. They were nothing more than fantasies, lies told to me by the romantic voices driven by Disney fairy tales. The more realistic thoughts kept me in check, reminding me that had Holden truly spent the last five years in love with me, he wouldn’t have kept this marriage a secret.
Suddenly, my hands molded back into fists, and an ache in my jaw ignited. “Mind if I come in?”
He glanced over my shoulder once more before taking a step back and begrudgingly inviting me in. Immediately to the right was the living room with a couch, loveseat, and recliner. Not waiting for him to offer me a seat, I took the middle cushion on the long couch and waited for him to join me.
“It’s been, what…three, four years, Jelly? What brings you here now?”
I hated hearing my family nickname roll effortlessly off his tongue. It used to be a comfort, a reminder of how close we were, of how close I’d wanted to be with him, but that was no longer the case. Not after he caused the hole in my chest by his blatant avoidance of me following our trip to Vegas. And especially not now after finding out we’d gotten married and he never bothered to tell me. Not once. Instead, he’d let me carry on as if I were the single woman in my early twenties I’d believed I was.
“I think you know why I’m here, Holden.”
“No, I honestly don’t. I haven’t seen you in years, and I’m pretty sure you’ve never stepped foot inside this house. You rarely come home, and when you do, it’s for a major holiday. You stay for a day, maybe two, and then leave just as fast as you came. You’ve made it extremely obvious how much you hate this town and everyone in it. So no…I don’t have a clue why you’re here.”
I huffed out a breath of frustration, having debated this same argument more times than I could count with my own family. “I don’t hate this town. My lack of presence has nothing to do with my feelings for this city or the people who live in it.” Although, it did have something to do with a specific resident, particularly the one sitting across from me. “I went away to college and spent the time enjoying myself. Being young and having fun. Isn’t that what most college-age people do? And now that I’m finished with school, I plan on moving back.”
“Yeah, heard you graduated a few months ago. Where have you been? Because you didn’t come back here. So you can’t say college has kept you away, because that ended, and yet you’ve still been absent.”
I wanted to know what world he lived in where a twenty-three-year-old moves back home with her parents the second she graduates from college. It seemed everyone I knew lived in this world—except me. I’d spent my whole life living in someone else’s shadow, come second—or fifth—to one sibling or another. The last five years away, on my own, being my own person was probably the best five years of my life, yet these people expected me to just walk away from it as if what waited for me here was better. I was the life of the party in college—literally, everyone used me to help plan their soirées. Here, I was nothing more than the youngest Brewer.
“I’ve spent the last couple of months on vacation…which brings me to why I’m here. Why don’t you tell me what happened in Vegas all those years ago? I’d love to finally hear the story of how I so readily gave you my virginity.”
“You still don’t remember, do you?” he asked with a scoff and slight headshake.
The fact I couldn’t recall what was meant to be the most important night of my life did nothing but frustrate me. Over the years, that frustration had burned into ire. It wasn’t directed at anyone, just at life in general, but hearing him accost me for not remembering—as if it were a slap in his face, not mine—made me turn my anger on him.
“Did you expect it to come back to me in the form of a dream? I was drunk. Very drunk. The only reason I knew I’d had sex was because I woke up the next morning naked, bare as the day I was born, and sore in places no virgin should ever be sore.”
Holden’s lips tightened and the muscles in his jaw flexed. His gaze narrowed while his nostrils flared wickedly. I’d never seen him this…pissed off. Upset. I couldn’t tell what emotion he felt because every part of him was a contradiction. Finally, he stood up and turned his back to me, his hands settling on his hips while his shoulders drooped, almost in defeat.
“An explanation would be nice,” I prodded.
“Fine. You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you.” He dropped his arms and turned to face me again, this time, his cheeks red and his gaze filled with a painful amount of regret. “You had left your sweater thing that went to your dress downstairs. I went to bring it up to you and found you drinking alone in your room. You invited me in, and we drank some more together. I had no idea how much you’d consumed before I got up there. I also had no idea the reason you were drinking, which you later revealed was because you were upset over that douchebag you were dating before prom.”
I’d forgotten all about being sad, or why I’d gotten inebriated to begin with. But now that he mentioned it, I recalled going back to my room to sulk in the depressing thoughts of forever being alone, being a virgin until the day I died, and no one ever wanting to marry me. Pathetic, but at the time, my adolescent, melodramatic fears were completely valid. I was eighteen, had just gotten my heart broken for the first time, and had watched my brother get married to the love of his life. Which meant I was officially the only Brewer child who wasn’t married, and it all kind of hit me at once. Rather than take a step back and look in the mirror, if nothing more than to remind myself that I was only eighteen years old and on the verge of taking my first step into personal freedom by going off to college, I threw myself an over-the-top pity party and indulged a little too heavily in the small bottles I’d swiped from Matt’s reception.
“And then what happened? Did we go anywhere?”
He sucked his teeth for a second, as if either trying to remember the night or figuring out how to tell me. If only he knew it wasn’t a secret, then maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to tiptoe around it. “I talked you into getting out of the hotel room to get some fresh air, so we took a walk along the strip.”
“Where did we go?”
“We watched the fountains in front of Bellagio, made out in front of a mime, held hands while walking the streets of Italy inside the Venetian, and then hung out with Elvis before heading back to the hotel. We went to your room, where you started to strip before we even made it through the door. You refused to take it slow and promised me you were ready.” Anger ignited every word, but I could tell he wasn’t pissed off over the actual events. No. What made him mad was his bruised ego over the fact I couldn’t remember. It was obvious in the way he reminded me of that forgettable night.
But what he didn’t know was how it angered me to listen to him. To hear about that night. Because that was the last night I’d had with him, and ever since then, a shattered heart resided in my chest. All because of Holden York. Giving in and listening to how I promised him I was ready did nothing but upset me. Even though I couldn’t remember it, I knew it was true. He was the only guy I had ever wanted, and being here, listening to this, was nothing more than a reminder that he had never felt the same.
“You held my face, looked me square in the eyes, and told me it was what you wanted, and you’d never regret it. I asked you how drunk you were, which you said you were tipsy but knew exactly what you were doing.” He shook his head and released a huffed, humorless chuckle. “I believed you. Only to wake up the next morning and feel like a fucking jackass.”
There were so many things to tackle, but I had to take it one thing a
t a time. If I tried to get answers for everything at once, I’d only get sidetracked and end up with nothing—it was a horrible habit of mine. “If you knew I was upset about Justin, why were you so willing to sleep with me? Were you just that desperate to get in my pants?”
I thought I had him. I really thought this would get him right where I wanted him. The perfect setup for when I let him know I was aware of this secret marriage. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. He sank back into the cushion and leaned forward with his head in his hands.
“Believe what you want, Janelle, but I wasn’t desperate to get into your pants. In fact, it very much seemed like the other way around.” He dropped his hands and locked his stormy gaze on me, effectively trapping me in my seat, in my head, unable to do anything until he finished speaking. “You are the one who attacked me in the elevator when we got back. And again in the hallway on the way up to your room. My plan was to get you back into your room safe and sound. You were the one with a different agenda.”
“You make it sound like I begged you. Like I threw myself at you.” I tossed my head back and squawked out a humorless laugh, but my insides didn’t react with the same indifference. My lower belly quickened and a flush of heat rippled through my body. I tried not to imagine doing those things with him—to him—but the sexy visions flashed through my mind, anyway. Me attacking him, hungry for him, kissing him, making love with him… Oh, God. “Not to mention, if I did, it would’ve only been because I was so upset. Which brings me back to my question. Why would you sleep with someone who’s crying over their ex? Seems rather pathetic. I mean, you could have anyone you wanted…”
I gritted my teeth, furious at myself for saying that last part. I should’ve left it at “pathetic.” Now I was the pathetic one. But to my surprise, he didn’t even acknowledge the blunder.
“I didn’t know you were upset about him until we were in bed. After the last time. I have no idea what time it was, but it had to’ve been around four or five in the morning. We were naked, sated, and about to drift off when you opened up about the reason you were upset in the first place, about thinking you weren’t good enough.”