by T A. McKay
A noise outside the door has me attempting to open my eyes, but the light has me shutting them again quickly.
“You need to get up. Trey called and we need to meet everyone for breakfast in his suite. Apparently Dalton has something that he needs to tell him and Trey wants us there in case it’s bad.”
I don't know why Nathan's shouting at me, but if he doesn’t stop there’s a chance the pain in my head will make me vomit on his feet.
“Then you need to get packed. Our flight leaves at four and we need to get to the airport for check in.”
“Stop. Shouting.” I don't know if he can hear me because my voice barely comes out through my dry throat.
“I have put water and coffee next to your bed, along with some aspirin. Take it, get a shower and get your ass to Trey’s room. I mean it, Grey.”
I manage to raise my hand to wave him away. I’ll be able to recover quicker if he stops shouting at me. So getting him to leave is my main priority. I hear his footsteps retreat and I sigh. I do need to get up, but I'm not sure the hangover will allow it. I don't remember much after we left the first club; actually I don't remember anything after the second bottle of champagne. Too much alcohol and now I'm suffering worse than I have before.
I manage to sit up and grab the bottle of water. I want to drink the whole thing in one go but I'm not sure how my stomach will handle that, so I take small mouthfuls, swallowing the tablets while I do. I'm hoping that a shower will make me feel a little more human because I'm not sure I will survive a flight home feeling like this.
I knock on the door to Trey’s suite and wait for someone to open it. I feel a little more human after my shower, but my stomach is still churning thanks to all the alcohol I drank. When the door opens I don't even acknowledge the person before I carefully move into the room. I have mastered the slide and move, limiting the amount of jarring for my still tender head.
“Good morning to you too, Grey.”
I hold my hand up, not fully trusting my ability to open my mouth without vomiting everywhere. I’ve already discovered the inability to brush my teeth without emptying my stomach, and I'm not sure if it will take much for me to be sick again. I walk over to the table where everyone is sitting; groaning when I notice the only chair that's empty is the one closest to the food. Roman must take pity on me because he grabs his plate and moves to the empty seat. I smile before sitting down in Roman’s vacated chair, thankful when someone puts a cup of coffee in front of me.
“Feeling a little rough this morning?”
I just groan in response, the stupid question doesn’t even warrant a proper answer. I'm met with laughter but as I drink my coffee I don't care. I spot Nathan at the other side of the table and glare at him. He looks like he just got out of bed after a full eight hours. Where I look a little green, he looks as hot as always. It’s just not fair.
The conversation around the table continues and I try to focus but it’s a lost cause, so I spend my time trying to remember last night. I just need to know that I didn’t do anything embarrassing like stripping naked or vomiting on the dance floor. Yeah, I’ve done both of those before.
As my tongue plays with my lip ring, a few memories of earlier in the night come flooding back. These are good memories that I never want to forget. Especially the moment that Nathan appeared on the floor of the club, walked over and kissed me like his life depended on it. It’s the first time I’ve kissed him with my lip ring in, and as he continually ran his tongue over it, he seemed to enjoy it. I remember that we danced for hours, rubbing our bodies against each other until we were out of breath and sweating. It was like having sex with our clothes on, and it one of the best nights I’ve had in a club.
My stomach drops and I look over to Nathan as one memory in particular replays. It was like every one of my fears came to life when I watched the super-hot woman approach him and began running her hands over his chest. She must have seen him dance with me but it didn’t stop her from trying her luck with him. He stood for a long time laughing and flirting, and it wasn’t until he saw me watching that he walked away. That's when the real drinking started; I needed anything that could block out the scene I had just witnessed.
Nathan looks in my direction and I give him a small smile, but he doesn’t return it. That makes me think that something happened last night, but with Trey and Dalton talking I know it’s not the right time to ask.
About an hour later Dalton gets up from the table and hugs Trey. They have spent the whole time discussing what he's planning on doing. I don't remember the details that was talked about because I struggled to focus when everyone starting talking over each other. From what I could make out, Dalton is leaving the army to become a private security advisor. The change is due to the fact that he's going to become a dad. That's why he came here this weekend, to try and talk to the woman who's pregnant. Apparently she’d told him that she couldn’t be with him when there was a chance that he wouldn’t come home alive. It wasn’t here that he met her originally, but this is where she came after she saying goodbye to him. Once he was released from hospital he knew he had to find her.
Everyone looks happy with the decision; especially Trey, who looks like a huge weight has been lifted off his shoulders. I can’t imagine having to live with the knowledge that you might never see your brother again, and that every time you speak to him might be the last. The funniest thing is Trey is now insisting that Dalton calls him Uncle Trey. Trey needs everyone to get used to the title apparently, because when the little one arrives he will be visiting all the time. I love the way he just accepts the new addition to his family, even without meeting the woman who Dalton wants to spend his life with.
I wave to Dalton as he leaves the suite and the others return to the table and sit down. It’s quiet now that he's gone, like there’s something going unsaid and I'm the only person that doesn’t know what it is.
“Are you packed?” It’s a simple question, but the tone of Nathan’s voice is cold, like he's trying to hold in his temper.
“Yeah, I'm ready to go whenever.”
He just nods and looks off to the other side of the room. I look towards Roman and he gives me a sympathetic look, and I have no idea why.
“Okay, I think I'm missing something. Someone want to clue me in on what's happening here. Did I do something last night?”
Roman bites his lip and Nathan laughs. It’s not a laugh filled with humor, it’s one filled with disbelief and distain. At least I know now that something did happen.
“You really don't remember?” Roman’s voice is filled with shock and it just confuses me even more. If I had done something, how come no one has said anything before now, especially if it was something that has pissed Nathan off so much?
“Remember what?”
“For fuck’s sake. I don't have time for this shit.” Nathan slams his hands on the top of the table, making me jump in my seat. I see Roman inching closer to Trey as I watch Nathan storm towards the door. I get up quickly, my anger taking over as I follow him.
“So you just run away like a coward. Don't take a minute to clue me into what I did, just leave when it gets too difficult.” I don’t even know what he's running from, so calling him a coward is a bit of a low blow.
“It’s not what you did, it’s what we did.” His voice is still full of anger, and now that I know that it involved us both of us I'm a little scared. Did we have a fight cause some damage?
I look around the room trying to get someone to help me work out the riddle that everyone knows the answer to but me. When my gaze finally lands on Roman he speaks to me.
“Look at your hand, Grey.”
My hand? I look down as I flex my hand. There is no pain so I haven’t hurt it. Something shiny catches my eye and I turn my hand over until it’s palm down. The silver ring on my left hand looks out of place and I don't know how I haven’t noticed it until now. My hangover must have drained all power of thought from me. I look up again, confused as to what
's happening. I turn to look at Nathan who is holding up his own left hand, the hand that’s complete with a silver ring on his fourth finger.
My eyes open as a memory starts to play at the back of my mind, a memory that I'm praying is wrong. I start to breathe rapidly, the panic starting to take over.
“That's right, Florence. We got married last night.”
Chapter 20
I slam the apartment door behind me. I'm happy to be home after such an epically fucked up weekend, but my anger still hasn’t settled. I’m so pissed off, and even though I know being angry with Grey is unfair, I still can’t talk to him politely. Even on the plane I made Roman change seats with me so I didn’t have to sit next to Grey, and that hadn’t exactly gone down well with Trey.
I’m just as much to blame for what happened. I was there last night and I didn’t stop it, so I shouldn’t put it all on Grey. Now I'm married to my roommate. My male roommate. I didn’t think I would ever get married, so to be married to a guy is an even bigger shock. And who knew that two guys could get married in Vegas?
When I woke up this morning I thought it had just been a dream, but when I looked at my hand the sinking feeling started. The silver ring was almost glowing as I stared at it, mocking me in its realness. I still didn’t believe it until I went through to Grey’s room and saw that he was wearing a matching one. That's when the sinking feeling almost took over and I raced through to Trey’s room to see if it really had happened. The look of humor on both their faces told me that it had. I begged Trey to tell me it wasn’t real, that there was no way I had actually gotten married, but all he did was give me a sympathetic look and told me it was all legal.
I had a few choice words for both Roman and Trey, yelling at them for letting us do such a stupid, idiotic thing. I’ve always relied on Trey to make sure I didn’t do anything like this, and the minute I really needed him he failed me. It doesn’t matter to me that we sneaked off to do the deed; they should’ve known that we were going to do something so epically stupid. They were the adults and should have kept a better eye on us.
Trey laughed at that last part of the rant, and I really can't blame him. There’s no one to blame except Grey and me, but it felt good for a few minutes to make it someone else’s fault.
By the time Grey arrived, I’d decided that I would put all the blame on him, but then he didn’t remember it happening which pissed me off more than it should have. How could he not remember getting married to me? He was the only other person there. That's when I knew that I had officially lost my mind.
“I'm sorry about all this. I will call a friend and ask to stay with them.” Grey’s voice is quiet, and suddenly I feel like the biggest dick in the world.
I walk over to where he’s standing and put my arm around his shoulder. “Don’t be silly. I'm just being a grumpy ass because you didn’t take my name.”
The corner of his mouth turns up as he tries not to laugh, and I feel relieved that I managed to lighten the mood a little.
I walk us both towards the couch in the living room and we collapse onto it. He leans against my shoulder and lets out a deep sigh. I know exactly how he feels. This weekend seemed like such a good idea but it turned out to be the most epic failure ever.
“What are we going to do?”
It’s the same question I asked Trey earlier when we got a chance to talk on our own. He's the best lawyer I know and even though this isn’t his area of expertize I was sure he would know what to do.
“Trey says that we can get the marriage annulled as long as we don't consummate it, which doesn’t sound fun at all. So I'm more than happy to pay for a full divorce if you’re up for a little fun.”
This earns me a full-blown laugh from Grey as he gets up. “That's what got us into this trouble, so maybe this is the universe’s way of telling us to stop. Good night, Nathan.”
I watch as he vanishes into his room, his words ringing in my ears. He wants this thing between us to stop? As much as hearing that should make me feel more comfortable, there’s a slight panic making its way through my body. I shouldn’t want to spend time with Grey, especially not as something more than friends, but he’s the only person I do want to be with. Without noticing, I seem to have gone from the guy who doesn’t do relationships and spends just one night with someone before moving on, to being the guy who only wants to be with one person.
Maybe this is the wakeup call I need. I should use the chance to explore my attraction to other men; I could start at Crave. That guy was interested the other night, so maybe I should take him up on his offer. I'm spending all my time with Grey so it’s only natural that he's the only person I think about. It’s time that I got back to the old me. I will start this weekend.
I close the bedroom door behind me quietly before walking over and falling onto my bed. This whole day has been a rewind and redo sort of day. It’s shocking to think that the best part of my whole day was the hangover from hell I woke up with. Everything after that was like a bad dream.
Roman had gone over everything that had happened the night before whilst we were on the plane and I cringed as he told me. I was initially annoyed that he had let me get married when I was drunk, but he explained that he hadn’t been there. Nathan and I had stumbled into the hotel a few hours after vanishing from the club and announced we were married. Just listening to Roman retell the story made me want to curl up into a small ball and die of embarrassment.
Now I'm a married man. The laughter escapes before I can control it and who could really blame me? I’m married to the guy who doesn’t do serious, the guy who can’t choose between men and women. Now when I find that person who wants to spend the rest of his life with me, he will be my second husband.
How do I let things like this happen? This year has seriously been the worst and it’s barely been two months. We haven’t even gotten to Valentine’s Day and I want to go back and redo the whole year. If I could get someone to take me back to Christmas Day so I could change it that would be great. That was the point where things started to go wrong. In fact I think it was the moment that Nathan put his lips on mine that my life started going downhill. It seemed to start a chain of events that have been pushing me to my limits.
There have been times in the last month that I didn’t think I would be able to get my life back to where it needed to be. I was starting to feel confident about the way things were going, but I should have known that something would happen to fuck it all up. It’s been a few weeks now since I needed to let all the stress out in the shower, ever since that night that Nathan found me, and I’ve felt better about things. I’ve felt that I might have someone who could help, and now I think that might be gone.
I’ve been avoiding talking to Nathan for far too long now. And I don't mean talking in general. I mean a serious conversation. I need to get his input on the living arrangements. I can’t live here forever, so I need to get a time frame for when he needs me out. I also need to breach the topic of us. I don't want to ruin anything we have, but I also can’t live with constantly not knowing what we are to each other. I have a feeling that that conversation will make him run, but even that is an answer in itself.
I take a deep breath and knock on Nathan’s bedroom door. It’s taken me a long time to build up the courage to ask him if I could talk to him, and now that I’ve knocked I just want to run away. It’s been three days since we returned from Vegas, and I’ve barely seen him in that time. He’s been spending a lot of time out of the apartment, but I know that he's home now because I heard the shower going earlier.
He opens the door and I momentarily lose the ability to think. He’s wearing a black shirt that’s tucked into a pair of tight black jeans. The jeans cling to his shapely thighs and I want to reach out and run my hands all over them. There’s something extremely sexy about a guy dressed all in black, and it makes all my manly parts tingle.
“Florence, just the person I was coming to see.” He walks back into his room and grabs an envelop
e off the top of his dresser. “Trey sent these over for us to fill in. It will get the annulment process started. There’s no hurry to fill them in, it’s not like I'm planning on getting married again soon.” He laughs but I can’t find any humor in what he's saying.
I know that getting married was a bad thing, but the speed in which he’s trying to correct the mistake hurts a little. It’s something that needs to happen, but I thought that we would both have a meeting with Trey in a few weeks. Now I know where his head is when it comes to us, so that's something that we don’t need to be talk about.
Take the envelope from his hand, forcing myself to smile at him. “Thanks. I will get them filled out in the next few days.”
“Fantastic. I'm going out tonight, so I won’t be in until very late … well hopefully.” He winks at me, and I can actually feel the moment my heart breaks.
This is the moment I was dreading. The moment when Nathan decided that I wasn’t worth his time anymore and that he would to go back to sleeping around. I honestly didn’t think I would change him, but there was always a very small part of me that hoped he might reciprocate my feelings one day.
I nod at him, not trusting my voice to work. I turn and rush away before I can make a fool of myself by crying in front of him. If he doesn’t want me that's fine, I don't need him. I was alone before I moved in here; I can be alone again.
I slip off the side of the couch and giggle when I land in a heap on the floor. The empty bottle of wine rolls away from me and I crawl across the floor to try and catch it. I hear a small voice and I stop moving, turning my head from side to side to try and work out where it’s coming from.