CHAPTER THIRTEEN Ginger
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ginger
W hat. The. Fuck?
Cole’s voice is low and deep and his words echo in my ears. Mrs Ashby . Everything comes crashing down around me as memories from last night continue to play in my head like a foggy reel.
The dance floor, his mouth on mine. How I told him I wouldn’t be his one-night stand. His hands, my hands … everywhere. Him … everywhere … us.
“How adventurous are you feeling tonight?” he asks, a drunken smirk on his face.
“Always adventurous,” I answer almost instantly. Cole brings his lips down to hover over mine, and the incredible scent of him this close washes into me.
“Prove it,” he taunts. “Truth or dare?”
A challenge.
“Always a dare, Cole,” I whisper.
Challenge accepted.
I look down at my ring finger. The simple white-gold band feels cool and foreign against my skin. I glance to his and see the thicker, more rugged version of my own. The way my body goes completely weak when I see that ring might live in my mind rent-free for a hell of a long time.
A ring that represents me? On Cole’s hand? Holy hell. Even now, in my near-death state, seeing that ring breathes life into me.
“Gatorade and Tylenol beside you,” Cole says, interrupting my hazy recollections. I see us making it into the license bureau just before they closed. Holding it together so we wouldn’t appear as drunk as we were. The chapel. What happened afterward, when we got back to his room. More than once. All of it hits me, the weight of the world crashing down around me.
“If you don’t want to be my one-night stand … then it’s a good thing we’re in Vegas. I dare you to marry me, Ginger, so I can properly fucking worship you—”
“Everything coming back to you?” Cole asks, causing me to flinch.
He looks stone-cold sober. How long has he been awake?
Cole stands and looks down at me with his hands on his hips. Scary-dad mode. Why is this doing it for me? Oh God, I slept with Cole. And while I don’t remember everything, the one thing I do recall is that it was … so fucking good.
I shake my head and nausea washes over me.
“Oh my God, Cole. What are we going to do? Can we just go down and ask them to reverse it—fuck, annul it? Fuck … fuck … fuck.”
“We only have two hours before we have to fly back,” he states in a monotone. Why is he calm? He’s way too calm. “You better wake up, have a shower. We need to figure this out.”
I nod, then swallow down a Tylenol, closing my eyes and silently begging for relief. I blow out a breath before inhaling another. Repeat. That’s it. Breathe, Ginger.
“This is a solvable problem. It might be one of the craziest mistakes I’ve made—alright, it takes the fucking cake—but there’s an easy solution. People do this all the time. It’s Vegas. We’ll just … yes … that’s what we’ll do, we’ll get an annulment,” I say, rubbing my temples.
Cole starts to laugh, then turns to stare out the window. He suddenly doesn’t seem as calm as he did two minutes ago.
“I’m a cop, Ginger, remember? Pretty sure you have to not have sex, prove fraud or lack of consent to get the marriage annulled. We definitely had sex and we definitely both consented.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I mutter, still rubbing my aching head, squeezing my thighs together to stop the ache between my legs and the memory of him between them.
Images of his rough hands all over my body take over. The way he touched me like he simply couldn’t get enough. How his lips never stopped searching my skin, his mouth on mine, worshipping me, just like he’d said he would. The things he said as he pressed me up against the hotel door the moment we shut it and he dropped to his knees, burying his face under my dress, tearing my panties aside.
“They can’t see you out there, Vixen, but they can hear you. Let them hear how much you like my tongue buried in your sweet cunt. Scream my name. Let this whole fucking city know whose wife you are.”
I clear my throat, wishing the one and only night I got to be with Cole I hadn’t been drunk, wishing I could remember it more clearly for future self-care reference. I blow out a breath, pushing what we did from my mind.
“Yeah, uh … definitely had sex,” I say, looking away, feeling the blush on my cheeks. “Don’t really remember it though,” I lie, finding it easier to pretend I don’t know what he felt like than admit it.
Wait—
“But we were so drunk—doesn’t that count for something?”
“Fucking Christ,” Cole bites out as he rubs his temples. “I know enough to know we can’t apply here. We have to do it where we live. Right next door to where I work.” He shakes his head. He’s definitely angry, but he doesn’t seem angry at me. He seems angry at himself. “I haven’t even been sworn in yet. One week on the job and the single-dad sheriff goes to Vegas, gets drunk and gets married to the incumbent congressman’s daughter? If that doesn’t scream small-town scandal, I don’t know what does.”
Oh God, my dad.
“Fuck,” I say, picturing my father’s face when this hits the local news.
I can’t take this in right now. I move quickly to swallow the rest of my Gatorade and stand, wrapping the sheet around me. Cole grins.
“This is not funny,” I say, struggling to conceal my body.
“It’s a little funny that now you’re shy? After …” he looks away from me before he finishes his sentence, “… the things we did.”
Yep, definitely going to throw up. My head buzzes as I make my way away from the bed. Where the fuck is my dress?
“I’m allowed to be shy when I don’t remember anything from last night,” I say, peddling my lie again.
Every part of me remembers him buried inside me. That part I’ll never forget.
“Fuck, I’m so proud of you, Ginger, so ready to take all of me. And you’re going to, Vixen. Every last fucking inch.”
The memory of the dirtiest words any man has ever spoken to me mixed with Cole, my Cole? Something about that affects me in a way I can’t put into words. I look up at his deep amber eyes. He’s still waiting expectantly, taking in every part of my sheet-clad body.
“Look, Cole, I just need my head to stop pounding and then, we’ll figure this out. Okay? No one ever needs to know.” I make a beeline for the bathroom, ready to pass out or be sick.
I hear him mutter something, but it fades as I shut the bathroom door behind me and drop to the floor, a million thoughts running through my mind. Holy shit, did we just ruin everything? And worse yet, why does this ring on my finger not scare me as much as it should?
Twenty minutes later, I feel semi-human and slightly calmer, the ring buried in my purse. My shower provided me with the time to think I needed to solve this. I’m going with my earlier play: denial for the win. I can simply pretend I don’t remember how it felt to have Cole’s body hovering over mine. Nothing will change. We can deal with this quietly, my father never has to know, the town never has to know. We can handle this. We can handle this.
I make my way back into the room, searching for something to put on other than my wrinkled blue dress.
“We’ll go for the annulment,” I offer. “There has to be a clause for intoxication. I can’t even believe they let us get married in that state.”
“I left you a pair of my sweats and a t-shirt.” Cole points to the chair. “And it’s Vegas. Drunken weddings are their bread and butter.”
I gratefully grab the sweats and disappear behind the bathroom door to put them on. When I make my way back out to the main room, a knock makes my eyes flit to his. I expect to see them worried too, but instead they’re traveling slowly over my curves in his sweats.
“Thank you for the clothes,” I say, folding my hands in front of me at the same time as he says, “It’s room service.”
Oh God, this is going to be awkward.
He pulls his eyes away and lets the concierge in.
I pace the room and wait as Cole tips her. When the door is closed again, I make my way to the table and slump down across from him.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I promised we wouldn’t lose control and we—”
“It’s not your fault, Ginger. I chose to drink that much. I chose to come up with the bright idea of getting married. Clearly I wanted you last night. This is my fault. It was a drunken moment of weakness and I should have known better.”
“This doesn’t have to change anything …” I mutter, desperately wishing I could rewind time.
He sighs and reaches across the table to grab my forearm. He pulls it to him, sliding his hand down over mine and stroking my ring finger. He looks down at it then back up at me.
“My receipt says I got the gold package. There will be photos to prove it, so I’d say everything has changed,” Cole says in a tone I can’t place just before his eyes grow serious. “But Ginger, me and you, we’re in this together—and us? There’s not a shot in hell one reckless night could ever ruin that.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief.
“I’ll handle it all,” he continues, my hand still in his. “I’ll find out everything I can tomorrow. I’m going to text Bev in the morning, have her pull all our options together. I can’t have any scandal right now. It’s for the best that we keep this to ourselves. Everything that happened last night. We can’t tell a soul.”
I nod, grateful for him in this moment. The last thing I need is for news of this to get out and provide my father with the primary disruption he is so desperately trying to avoid. He’d never let me live it down, and would give me a lifetime of lectures I don’t need. I’m twenty-seven years old and sometimes I still feel like I’m a kid when it comes to him.
I look around the room, taking the space in for the first time. It looks like a tornado has torn through it.
It was us. We were the tornado.
My phone starts to ring. Olivia’s ring tone. Looks like I’m about to get a lecture anyway.
When I return to our room, it takes me a half hour of lying to Olivia to get her to relax.
“So you two got drunk, slept together in his bed, and want me to believe nothing happened?”
“Cole and I have fallen asleep together before,” I say so I don’t have to lie to her.
I don’t like keeping this from Liv, but I can’t risk CeCe finding out about last night, at least not right now. I won’t cloud her wedding summer with my stupid life choices. Besides, there’s no point. It will all be a distant memory before we know it.
As we make our way to the plane, the heaviness of the weekend hits me.
I left Laurel Creek ready to blow off some steam with my girls, and I’m coming home Cole Ashby’s wife.