Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
PRESLEY
A very naked-looking Hollis is in my bed.
No, wait. This isn’t my bed.
His bed, maybe? I haven’t quite figured out where I am right now or how I got here. I’ve only been awake for two minutes, and nothing makes sense.
Not a damn thing.
Especially the words that just came out of his mouth…
“What do you mean, you think we got married?”
That’s crazy. He’s crazy.
I look down at the ring on my finger.
“I mean exactly that, Pres. I think we got drunk off our asses last night and got married.”
I press my palm to my forehead. My head is throbbing. It feels like there is alcohol literally leaking out of my pores, and everything is so fucking hazy, but there’s no way I drank so much that I lost an entire day.
“Okay, let’s think,” I say as calmly as I can. “You said the last thing you remember was sightseeing? What about after that?”
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I think we went to a bar?” He grips his head and grimaces in pain. I guess I’m not the only one with a headache.
Maybe we both need a little sustenance.
Scooting to the edge of the bed, I stop short. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
I glance down at the blankets covering me and feel a faint blush warming my cheeks. “I was going to order some food and coffee since we both look like we could use it. Plus, there’s Advil in my purse, but I, um…” I look down, hoping he’ll catch what I’m trying to convey.
“But what?”
“I don’t have any clothes on, Hollis!” I say in a fluster.
“You’re naked?” His voice jumps a whole damn octave, I swear. And why does he sound so shocked? He doesn’t look any less naked than I do.
“No,” I say. “But considering how skimpy my undergarments are, I might as well be.”
I hear him groan. “Did not need to know that.”
“Figured you already knew, given our current situation.”
“My memory isn’t exactly serving me any favors today, Pres,” he grumbles.
I feel the bed shift beside me, and I turn without even thinking. When I see Hollis getting up, I almost look away, but then I notice his black boxer briefs.
Oh, so he’s not naked either…
Confusion overwhelms me. “Did we—” I stop mid-sentence because he turns around to face me and…sweet baby Jesus.
That’s a whole lot of man candy right there. I don’t know where to look first. His chest and abs are a fucking work of art. Toned and tanned with the finest dusting of hair trailing down to…
“We didn’t,” he says firmly, abruptly ending my blatant ogling.
“How do you know?”
“’Cause there are a lot of things I could forget—like my own wedding, apparently—but that’s not one of them.” The way he says it and the intensity with which he looks at me send shivers down my spine.
I open my mouth to respond, but he moves before I can say a word, heading toward the phone on the small desk by the window. “I’m just gonna order a little of everything. Okay?”
“Just no eggs,” I plead. That’s something my wonky hangover stomach can’t handle right now.
He grimaces. “Agreed.”
While he talks to room service, I glance down at the simple gold band on my left hand, trying to make sense of how it got there. I don’t even notice when his call finishes or the bed dips, and Hollis sits down beside me.
“Hey,” he says softly.
I look up and see that he’s now wearing a pair of low-slung pajama pants.
“Is this your room?” I ask, trying to remember if I’ve been in here before. I think we came up here to drop off his bag when he surprised me yesterday, but I don’t remember it being so grand.
“It’s ours, apparently.”
My eyes widen. “What?”
His eyes track mine as he softly says, “A wedding present to ourselves, according to the front desk.”
I feel my stomach clench at his words. “So we are married.”
“The marriage license by the phone would make it look that way, yes.”
I lift my hands in an exasperated motion. “How does this even happen? What idiot would marry us? Like, I know we’re in Vegas and—”
“Pres?” His voice is strained, with a note of panic.
“Yeah?” I immediately look to see what’s wrong.
His gaze is firmly pinned on the floor, avoiding all eye contact. “I’m gonna need you to put clothes on if you want me to stay focused.”
I look down and gasp. My wild hand gesture made me drop the firm grip I had on the sheet, and now, aside from my thin lace bra, I’m naked from the waist up. “Shit!” I curse, gathering up the sheet to wrap around my torso. “Sorry!”
I stand, which causes him to stand with me since I’m dragging the sheet along. He turns, keeping his back to me, which, considering our current situation, makes me snort out a laugh.
“Something funny?”
“Kind of,” I answer. “The way you’re averting your gaze. Doesn’t seem very husbandly of you.”
He briefly glances over his shoulder, and the heat in his gaze makes me blush. “Would you prefer I watch?”
I swallow, and suddenly everything feels so real in that moment.
The hotel room.
The ring.
Him.
“I’ll just go grab some clothes,” I awkwardly blurt out before looking around. “Wait, do I have any in here?”
He nods. “Looks like the hotel staff transferred everything from our separate rooms to here last night.”
My brow furrows. “So we were too drunk to remember getting married, but cognizant enough to combine our rooms?”
He shrugs as he looks out the window in an attempt to keep his focus off me, I’m sure. “When I inquired, they said we came in announcing our nuptials to anyone who would listen and then asked for the biggest suite they had.”
“How very Ross and Rachel of us,” I mutter, looking around at the tall windows and the large bed. I can’t even imagine how much a night in a room like this costs. “How are we going to pay for this?”
He finally looks up at me. “I’ll take care of it.”
“I can’t let you do that,” I argue.
“How does the saying go?” A wicked smile spreads across his face. “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours?”
My brow furrows in frustration. He cannot seriously be suggesting…
“Go get dressed, and then we can eat and try to make sense of the last twelve hours.”
But that’s the problem.
Nothing makes sense.
Nothing at all.
HOLLIS
Married.
We got fucking married?
Standing in the shower, I let the water pour over me as I try to remember exactly how the hell we went from something as innocent as ziplining to vowing to love and cherish each other for the rest of eternity.
And why do I feel like this might all be my fault?
I finish up, turn off the water, and dry myself off. Just as I’m pulling my shirt over my head, I hear Pres talking to someone from room service on the other side of the door.
“Thank you,” she says politely.
“Of course,” they answer. “Will there be anything else, Mrs. Beck?”
“N-no.” Pres stumbles over the sound of my last name. My heart does too.
Fucking hell.
Standing in front of the mirror, I hold out my hand and glance down at the ring that now resides there. It should feel heavy, burdensome. Wrong.
But it doesn’t. It feels like it’s exactly where it’s supposed to be. It feels right.
And isn’t that a kicker?
In my thirty-two years, I don’t think I’ve ever really considered the idea of getting married. After spending my childhood with a woman obsessed with the idea, it didn’t appeal to me all that much.
But now?
When I open the bathroom door and find Pres gazing down at the nearly identical gold band on her finger, though, I know I have a problem.
Because I don’t think my new wife sees that ring the same way I do.
How could she?
She just got cheated on by her boyfriend and then wakes up to find herself married to her childhood friend? Jonas said that Vegas had a way of stirring up trouble, but even I couldn’t have imagined this.
She turns toward the sound of the door opening and gives a hesitant smile. “She called me Mrs. Beck.”
I flinch. “I heard.”
“My parents are going to be thrilled,” she says at the same time I announce, “We can get an annulment.”
Her eyes go wide as I suck in a breath. We stare at each other for a moment. Then another.
Finally, she speaks. “You want to get an annulment?”
My heart starts to hammer in my chest. “I just thought with everything going on between you and Jace—” I blurt out, before landing on, “You don’t?”
“You know about Jace?” She seems surprised.
“You told me when you were drinking mai tais by the pool. You called him a dirty, rotten cheater. Do you not remember?”
She covers her face with her hands. “No. Obviously. God, this is so embarrassing. I’m never drinking again,” she groans, plopping onto the bed. She’s wearing a pair of tight yoga pants and a sweatshirt. I wish I could say it made me want her less, but it doesn’t.
She’s gorgeous in everything.
I really need to get a grip on this attraction I have for her, especially now that we’re fucking married.
“I second that—the drinking thing, I mean. My head is killing me,” I say, moving toward the breakfast tray. I go straight for the coffee, pour two cups, and hand her one. “I know you’re particular about how you like it.”
“I am,” she agrees, but seems taken aback by the observation. It doesn’t stop her from reaching for the cream and three packets of sugar. Then she looks over the food offerings and grabs a plain bagel and returns to her spot on the bed.
I stick to black coffee, but take a seat at the desk across from her.
“Tell me what you want to do, Pres.”
Those baby blues meet mine. “Go back in time and make better choices?”
Ouch.
She must see me flinch at her choice of words because she instantly starts to backpedal.
“I’m sorry, Hollis. I didn’t mean you. I don’t know what led us here, but getting drunk and married to you isn’t half as dumb as dating Jace Vaughn.
My family has been telling me what a skeevy piece of shit he is for months, and all I ever did was stick up for him and now… ”