Pushing the Boundaries (Picking up the Pieces #3)

by Jessica Prince

  She just shrugged and pulled a book from her purse.

  Taking my seat and shifting around to get comfortable, I kicked back and relaxed. I was on my way to Vegas to watch two of my closest friends get married, and I was finally going to get Lizzy right where I wanted her. This weekend was going to be epic!

  “Why’d Brett punch you in the balls?”

  Once we’d all made it off the plane, out of nowhere, Brett turned around and nailed Trevor right in the crotch with a hard punch. I’d never heard such a high-pitched sound come from such a big man before.

  “‘Cuz he’s the fucking devil,” Trevor wheezed from his hunched-over position in one of the chairs next to the gate. I wasn’t certain, but it kind of looked like Trevor was about to cry.

  When I shot a look at Brett, he simply shrugged.

  I didn’t understand men and the shit they did. Seriously, women didn’t go around punching each other in the boob just to see who could hit the hardest. There was a reason women ruled the world.

  With a shake of my head, I turned back to Trevor. “Still think you’re gonna throw up?” I asked sympathetically as I rubbed his back. “I can try to get one of those air sickness bags for you.”

  “All right, enough screwing around,” Savannah announced to all of us. “Can we get a move on already?”

  “Oh, please excuse me while I sit here dying.” Trevor lifted his head and cut a glare at Savannah. “Wouldn’t want my personal wellbeing to put a damper on your weekend.”

  I tried my hardest to stifle my laughter as Savannah rolled her eyes at Trevor’s dramatics. That was just another reason why men would always be the weaker sex. A little bit of pain, and they were convinced their life was coming to an end.

  “I’m almost positive you did something to earn that junk punch,” Savannah deadpanned, not an ounce of concern laced in her voice.

  I was pretty sure I heard Trevor whimper.

  “Now!” Savannah said with a clap of her hands. “Let’s go get me married!”

  In true Vegas fashion, Jeremy and Savannah insisted on getting married by none other than Elvis himself. That is, if Elvis was a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound, sixty-year-old Asian man. But despite those minor differences, the wedding was absolutely beautiful. There was no way in hell I would’ve been able to hold back the tears as I watched two of my best friends profess their undying love to each other. I’d watched as Savannah folded into herself after she and Jeremy broke up months back, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared as I stood by helplessly as my friend withered away.

  Her relationship with Emmy grew strained to the point where some of us were afraid it was beyond repair, especially after Savannah packed everything up and moved away. But now she was back. She was home where she belonged and marrying the man she was meant to be with. I couldn’t have been happier, even if a small part of me was jealous when I saw the love that shined in their eyes as they stared at one another.

  After the ceremony, we made sure to party it up like you could only do in Vegas, spending the rest of the night at the club in our swanky hotel. Despite being overjoyed for my friends, I might have imbibed just a little too much in my efforts to drown out the melancholic thoughts rolling around in my head. What the hell; it was Vegas, after all. What happened there, stayed there, right?

  The rest of the night was a blur of drinking, dancing, and laughing with some of the people I loved most in the world. I couldn’t remember exactly where the night cut off, but from the thundering bass inside my skull the next morning, it was obvious I’d taken my partying a little too far. I felt like I was dying. No, scratch that; I definitely was dying.

  “Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” I groaned as I slowly peeled my eyes open against the harsh rays of sunlight flooding the hotel room.

  “Well, someone sounds like they woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

  Rolling over against the protests of my roiling stomach, I saw Trevor propped up on his elbow smiling down at me. “I feel like I woke up under a Mack Truck that spent the night driving over me.”

  He smiled brightly, flashing me that killer grin of his. And that was when my brain started firing on all cylinders.

  “What the hell are you doing in my bed?” I asked, but before he could answer my gaze flicked about the room, taking in the unfamiliar décor. “And where the hell are we? This isn’t my room.”

  “The hotel upgraded us,” he answered, still smiling that mischievous, cat-who-ate-the-canary smile.

  “Why the fuck would they do that? Oh, God! Please tell me I didn’t hand my credit card over,” I begged as I took in the opulence of the hotel suite which was clearly way over my budget. “Dammit, Trevor! You know you’re supposed to keep an eye on me when I drink!”

  I had a nasty little habit of trying to make it rain when I drank too much.

  “Relax, cher; it was complimentary. The hotel’s way of saying congrats to the newly-married couple.”

  I sucked in a gasp then slapped my hand over my mouth, quickly realizing my breath smelled like fermented road kill. “We stole Jeremy and Savvy’s room?” I whispered behind my hand, horrified that I couldn’t remember what in the ever-loving shit happened the night before.

  Trevor’s loud laughter rattled inside my aching skull at the same time it shook the bed, the movement jostling the sheet around my chest.

  “Oh, Christ! Why am I naked?!”

  Grabbing the sheets and yanking them up to my chin, I took in the fact that Trevor was in bed with me…without a shirt on…while I was naked!

  Oh god oh god oh god.

  “Did we…were we…Oh, sweet mother of fuck, please tell me we didn’t have sex.”

  “Believe me, cher, if we had sex, you’d definitely remember.”

  “Oh, thank you, Lord,” I sighed in relief before plopping back on the comfy pillows. “Jeremy and Savvy are gonna be pissed we stole their room.”

  Trevor sat up in the bed. The sheets fell down to his waist, showcasing his impeccably-muscled and tattooed body. Shit, don’t stare, Lizzy.

  “We didn’t steal their room, honey.”

  “Then how—”

  Before I could finish my question, he grabbed hold of my left hand and held it in front of my face. “Surprise, wifey.”

  Shooting up in the bed, I stared at the sparkly solitaire ring that adorned my ring finger before turning to look at Trevor grinning like the son of a bitch just won the lottery. Then I looked back at the ring.

  Then puked all over his lap.

  “Lizzy—”

  “No! You don’t talk!” I interrupted as the elevator dinged and the doors opened to the lobby. After upchucking all over his lap, I’d gone into hysterics about getting drunk and married in Vegas. After several minutes of swinging between crying, yelling, and hyperventilating, I’d managed to convince myself that all would be okay. So we had a quickie marriage, no biggie. We’d just have a quickie annulment before heading back home and all would be right in the world once again.

  Or at least that’s what I thought.

  Then he pulled up the wedding pictures on his phone. Wedding pictures which had been posted to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and any other social media outlet out there. Wedding pictures which I’d been tagged in for my whole entire family to see. My phone had been pinging with comments and messages all morning.

  “Cher—” he started again as I stormed off the elevator in the direction of where our friends were waiting to meet us for breakfast. For the most part, they all looked as bad as I felt—surprisingly, it was Savannah’s mom who looked the worst. Who’d have guessed she liked to party?—so I wasn’t alone in my hung-over misery. But from the dumb-ass grins on all of their faces, they knew exactly what I was so pissed off about. And for that, they all had to die.

  “Don’t you cher me!” Pulling out my phone, I scrolled through and began reading some of the comments out loud. “Damn! Got yourself a hottie. Hashtag getcha some. Hashtag wedding sex. Hashtag if only I were younger. That�
�s from my eighty-year-old Nana, Trevor! My Nana!”

  From behind me, my friends busted out in hysterical laughter at my slightly-eccentric, more-than-slightly-insane Nana. Yep, they all had to die.

  “Your Nana sounds like the shit! I can’t wait to meet her,” Trevor told me, with way too much enthusiasm.

  “You aren’t meeting my Nana! She’s my Nana!”

  Yes, I was fully aware I was beginning to sound like a fourth grader, but in my defense, I was more than a little stressed. “We’re getting an annulment and acting like this never happened. And don’t y’all start shit with me!” I said as I spun around to address all of my friends as a whole. “I saw every single one of those photos, and each of you assholes was front and center cheesing it up! Hell Emmy, half the tags I got came from you!” She at least had the decency to look properly chastised.

  “Ah, but sugar pie, we can’t get an annulment. Nana and Pop Pop already invited us and your whole family over for dinner to celebrate our new marriage. See?” He handed his phone over and sure enough, Nana had created a calendar invite on Facebook, making sure every single one of my relatives within a fifty-mile radius was invited. Trevor had already RSVP’d for the both of us, that asshole.

  Holy shit! Mom and Dad just accepted.

  This was getting out of hand. And as I turned to look up into my “husband’s” smiling face, my anger bubbled over. In a fit of uncharacteristic (okay, maybe not so much) rage, I chucked his phone on the ground and stomped on it over and over again until it was completely annihilated.

  There was a strong possibility that the saying about redheads and their tempers was very true.

  “Well, now,” Trevor said as he calmly put his hands on his hips. “That wasn’t a very wife-ly thing to do.”

  At that, all I could do was let out an enraged screech and storm off past everyone in the direction of the buffet. I needed coffee, bacon, pancakes, and an attorney. In that order.

  The rest of the weekend in Vegas was nothing but a barrage of phone calls from my family—some of them informing me I landed a ten and that I better not do anything to eff it up, some of them questioning if I’d gone out of my ever-loving mind—and avoiding my loving husband like the plague. It was either avoid him or murder him. And I wasn’t fond of the idea of jail time. So his ass spent our last night in Vegas sleeping on the couch of our fancy honeymoon suite.

  Turns out, even though everyone was drunk—with the exception of a pregnant Emmy, who did nothing to stop the nuptials—all of my friends were still right-minded enough to know that Trevor and me getting hitched was a horrible idea. But instead of doing something to stop it, every single one of them egged it on. Apparently, when we were at the club, I started going on about how I wanted someone who looked at me the way Luke and Jeremy looked at Savannah and Emmy, and how I wanted to get married more than anything in the world. When Trevor suggested I marry him, everybody—my drunk-as-shit self included—thought it was a brilliant idea!

  Clearly, all of my friends were idiots and I needed to interview for replacements the minute I got home.

  I’d threatened bodily harm against Brett if he switched places with Trevor on the return flight home, but that didn’t deter him one bit. With Brett having the window seat and me in the middle, Trevor conned the little old lady in the aisle seat next to me into changing, telling her we were newlyweds and the airline made an unfortunate mix-up and didn’t seat us together. Having been charmed beyond an inch of her life by his pretty blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, the old woman had been more than glad to trade seats with Trevor. And I hated her for it.

  “So…” Trevor started once the plane had taken off. “I’m thinking I’ll ask Nana to make pot roast for our celebration dinner. She any good with a crock pot?”

  Brett snorted from my other side and earned himself an elbow to the ribs.

  “Don’t call her Nana. She’s not your Nana; she’s my Nana. And there isn’t going to be a celebration dinner.”

  He gasped like he couldn’t believe what I was saying. “We’re married now, so that makes her my Nana, too. I love her.”

  “You don’t know her!” I seethed.

  “I know her here,” Trevor responded, putting a hand over his heart. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was an Air Marshal on our flight, because I was pretty sure I was fixing to stab him.

  “Does she make a good chocolate cake? You know how much I love chocolate cake,” he continued after five minutes of silence.

  “I want to kill you. You know that, right?”

  “This is starting to feel like a real marriage!” Trevor bounced up and down in his seat like a boy who’d just gotten his very first porno mag.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and laid my head back. “I hate you so hard right now,” I grumbled before letting the slight movement of the plane lull me into a much-needed nap.

  Work had been exhausting. I’d had to push back a ton of appointments in order to take that extended weekend for Jeremy and Savannah’s Vegas wedding, so today had been brutal. Once my regulars found out I was back in town, they’d swarmed my nail salon like vultures. Elegant Nails had opened about five years ago, and the little shop was my pride and joy. While Cloverleaf was a smaller town, it wasn’t lacking in salons and day spas. But I’d been blessed that Elegant Nails was the most popular one in town. My girls knew their shit. It didn’t matter what you came in for: acrylic, manicure, pedicure, shellac, gel…we did it all. And not to sound braggy or anything, but we also did it the best. It was a guarantee that no one ever walked out of my salon unhappy with how their nails came out. Elegant Nails was a thriving shop in the middle of town that stayed packed from open to close. And I savored every single minute of it

  But even though it wasn’t manual labor or anything, my days could still be exhausting. My back hurt from being hunched over clients’ hands. My ass was sore from sitting for over twelve hours, and my neck was killing me. It was time I really started to look over my expansion plans for the shop. I’d been wanting to build on for a while now, making rooms available for massages and waxing, but something had always come up to stall my plans. But at this point in time I’d have given my right boob for an onsite masseuse to work out the stiffness coiled tight through my entire body.

  I reached back and tried to rub out the knot which had formed between my shoulder blades as I unlocked my front door and pushed it open. Going through my typical routine, I dropped my purse and keys on the table by the door and started for the kitchen as I pulled my shirt over my head. I needed a huge glass of wine and a bubble bath, STAT.

  I was halfway down the hall, my arms in the air, shirt pulled over my head, when a deep voice stopped me in my tracks.

  “Welcome home, wifey.”

  I jerked my shirt down, trying desperately to cover up the sheer pink lace of my bra. But, as usual, the damn thing got stuck in my mass of curls, causing me to flail around like I was having a seizure before I managed to get it untangled from my hair and pulled back over my chest.

  “Gotta say, cher: you strip for me every day, this marriage is gonna work out great!”

  “Son of a bitch!” I yelped once I was fully covered. Turning to face my intruder, I ignored the blush I knew was covering me from cheek to chest, making my skin as red as my hair. “What the hell, Trevor?!”

  “Now, is that any way to greet your hubby after a long day at work?” He dropped a box on the ground and put his hands on his hips before looking at me with that smile I would usually love if I hadn’t still been beyond pissed.

  I had been married for all of forty-eight hours and I already wanted to kill my husband. And what I saw when I dragged my eyes from Trevor to the box he’d just dropped made those murderous fantasies I’d been having since Sunday come back full force.

  “What the fuck is all this shit?” I asked as I waved my arms around. Boxes were piled up everywhere. “And what in the ever-loving hell is that!” I screeched, pointing at the offending navy-blue monstrosity sitting next t
o my beautiful, comfy sea-foam green living room set.

  “That, my loving wife, would be my Barcalounger.”

  “The one from your apartment?”

  “Yep,” he responded, still wearing that stupid-ass grin.

  “Can you explain why the hell it’s in my living room?”

  “Don’t you mean our living room?”

  My brain chose that moment to explode. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “I moved in!” He threw his arms wide like he’d just announced the McRib was back and it was the best day ever.

  “I’m sorry. What?” I repeated, because clearly this was a bad dream. I would wake up any moment and that ugly-ass chair wouldn’t be in my living room next to all my pretty things. Yep. It had to be a dream. I reached up and pinched my arm, hard.

  “Ow! Shit!”

  Nope, not a dream. I was in hell.

  “The hell’d you do that for?” Trevor asked, looking at me like I was the crazy one.

  Not bothering with a response, I walked over to my purse, pulled out my cell and dialed.

  “‘Lo?” the voice on the other end answered.

  “Luke?”

  “You got me, babe. What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to let you know I’ve gone temporarily insane and I’ll be killing your best friend now. It’s not premeditated. I’ve really lost my fucking mind.”

  “Uh, sweetheart, I’m pretty sure you calling to give me the heads-up counts as premeditation.”

  “No, nuh-uh. Not when I’m crazy, which obviously, I am right now. Because Trevor just announced he’s moved in. And all his ugly shit is currently co-mingling with all my pretty shit. And I pinched the hell out of my arm to prove it had to be a nightmare. But nope! It’s real! He’s currently standing here, smiling like an asshole with all his nasty crap scattered around my living room, getting his germs on everything! And now I have a goddamn bruise on my arm!” By the time I finished my little speech, I was nearly hyperventilating.