Chapter 1
The moment I woke, I knew something was wrong.
It wasn’t the intense pounding in my skull. It wasn’t the gross feeling of day-old makeup on my eyes and face, even though I preferred not to wear makeup. It wasn’t even the light pouring in from the massive window that was on the wrong side of my room and far too close to my bed.
It was the arm around my waist.
But in the time it took for me to stealthily slip out from beneath the heavy arm, grab the unfamiliar digital clock on the nightstand, and whirl around with the hunk of plastic aimed at the stranger behind me, details started filtering in through the pain.
Briggs and Lainey’s destination wedding. Aruba. A familiar, woodsy scent—
Gray?
I stopped inches from smashing the small clock against his temple, my hand hovering mid-air, and my heart pounding out a punishing rhythm in time with my head as I stared at my friend’s sleeping form.
No, no, no, no, no. This can’t—I wouldn’t.
I took in what I could see of Hudson Gray: light brown hair a mess from sleep, no shirt, and displaying naturally tanned skin and relaxed muscles I was well acquainted with.
Not in a way that meant anything, or that would explain why I’d just woken beside him.
I was just familiar with the way nearly every member of our crew looked, since privacy had rarely been a luxury during the years we’d worked Special Ops missions overseas.
None of us had ever made a thing of it because it’d been part of the job. But this was different.
This was Gray . . .
A Special Forces team member turned Shadow Industries coworker. The best friend I’d ever had and the bane of my existence.
He shamelessly flirted with every woman he passed.
He made me want to punch things on an hourly basis—specifically, his too-handsome face.
Yet I trusted him with my life, I could be myself with him in a way I’d never been able to with anyone else, and—despite my every attempt to prevent it—he’d stolen my heart sometime in the last decade. Not that he would ever know that.
And now he was here. In my hotel room. In my bed. Did I also mention it was Gray?
My stomach twisted and knotted and fluttered as I shakily set the clock on the nightstand.
Gray and I had slept next to each other during missions .
. . along with the rest of the team. While working or watching our favorite shows, we’d crashed on his couch more times than I could remember, with my legs stretched out across his lap and him pretending to be annoyed that I was hogging the blanket.
But we’d never gone near a bed, his arm had never been around me, and his missing shirt had never ended up on me.
Except the shirt on my body was absolutely Gray’s undershirt.
I was going to be sick. I never got sick. Then again, I’d never done anything before yesterday to result in the torturous beating in my skull now. I’d also never—
I tore my stare from Gray, my stomach once again twisting as I worried over the possible events of the previous night.
I wouldn’t have. I know I wouldn’t have done something so careless. I spared another glance at his sleeping form. Right?
Wrong.
Because, along with the underwear that didn’t at all feel like the underwear I’d worn for the wedding, there was a very distinct and unfamiliar ache between my legs.
My stomach churned and my chest pitched, faster and faster, as my thoughts spun.
There was no way I’d given Hudson Gray everything during a night I couldn’t even remember. And yet, all signs pointed to yes. Yes, I had.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever hated myself more.
I kind of hated Gray too, because he knew—he knew—I’d never been with anyone. Not that he knew why, considering he’d been the core of my reasoning.
That kind of intimacy had always been such a taboo subject in my family, that I’d never given it—or the idea of saving myself—much thought until I’d met Gray.
Once I’d truly gotten to know him and fallen for him, I’d known that if I ever gave myself to someone, it would be him, or no one.
Considering I’d watched him ogle every other woman for the past decade, it’d been fairly obvious it would end up being no one.
And yet . . .
My unsettled stomached twisted for so many reasons as I tried swallowing the loathing and shame building and building as I unsteadily moved through the hotel room.
Doing everything to avoid looking at the bed again, I shakily dressed in a pair of spandex, athletic shorts and one of my own oversized shirts.
I fought the urge to curl my arms around my stomach as that ache flared, mocking me with what I’d done—what we’d done—in our too-inebriated state.
Or, at least, mine.
Gray wasn’t the type of person to have more than one drink during any setting—none of the Shadow members were.
Most of them hardly drank at all, in case there was an unexpected situation where they needed clear heads.
On the other hand, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had alcohol before the reception yesterday afternoon.
Keeping my steps silent, I moved back to the desk, where the rest of our clothes from the day before were carelessly scattered, and dropped Gray’s shirt as if it had burned me.
The material landed on top of the bridesmaid dress Lainey had somehow forced me into, where it was lazily slung over the desk chair.
Embarrassment swept through my veins and pricked at the backs of my eyes as I wondered how I’d let this happen. Wondered how haphazardly discarded clothes in my hotel room had become a reality.
My stilettos were half hidden on the chair by the button down all the groomsmen had worn.
Gray’s shoes and socks were tossed messily against the desk itself.
The necklace and earrings Lainey had given to me and her sister for being in the wedding were just as hastily tossed across the desk and an open paper with trifolds.
And all of it screamed what’d happened last—
One of my eyebrows ticked up, making my headache hyperfocus on that spot on my forehead, when I noticed the large, script words beneath the necklace.
Reaching for the thick paper, unexpected relief clashed with unnecessary dread as I wondered who thought it would be a good idea to give me Briggs and Lainey’s marriage certificate for safe keeping.
Not only had Briggs’ sister and best friend both been there—along with Lainey’s entire family—but I also didn’t remember much of anything after the reception.
I couldn’t imagine why I’d been entrusted with something so important when I hadn’t even been able to be trusted with myself.
I set the paper back on the desk just before a sharp inhale tore down my throat when the signatures at the bottom caught my eye.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
My stare darted over the paper again and again, disbelief pulsing through me, because the names didn’t say Asher Briggs and Lainey Pearson. They said Hudson Gray and Mallory Monroe.
Our names. Our signatures.
On an officiant-signed Certificate of Marriage.
A wave of dizziness and disbelief crashed over me. “How did this happen?” I whispered to the otherwise silent room before the pounding in my head shouted the answer.
Thanks, alcohol.
Some foreign, vulnerable feeling crept through my veins like poison as I worried over something else entirely for the first time since waking: what I might’ve revealed to my best friend in my drunken state, before remembering this was Hudson Gray.
A guy who would probably propose to anyone, if only to get an obnoxiously flirty laugh and the interest of whatever girl he set his sights on then, because what sane girl would say yes to a stranger?
Unfortunately for my heart and his perpetual bachelorhood, he’d proposed to the one person who’d been painfully, hopelessly in love with him for far too long.
And then I’d given him everything . . .
I was going to kill him.
My stomach rolled and head spun in response to the overwhelming surge of emotions.
I was going to be sick . . . and I was going to kill him.
Storming over to the bed, I let every ounce of my confusion, anguish, and loathing over that vulnerable feeling fuel the slap across Gray’s perfect, handsome face.
“Wake up,” I seethed, even though he was already scrambling up, body tensed and arms raised, preparing for a fight I was no longer ready for, considering I had one hand gripping my head and the other clutching my rolling stomach.
Just as his bloodshot, pale green eyes landed on me, a pained moan slipped past his lips that I was sure had nothing to do with my slap, confirming he most likely hadn’t adhered to his self-imposed, one-drink rule.
“Why?” he mumbled as he carefully laid his head on the pillow again while dragging his hands over his face, showing he wasn’t much better off than I was.
In that one aspect, at least.
“Yes, why?” I ground out. “What did you do?”
He squinted at me like it hurt to keep his eyes open, but that signature smirk still crept across his face.
“Hold on,” he muttered, his southern drawl so much thicker than usual, as it always was when he first woke.
Again, something I only knew from years of overseas missions and unintentionally falling asleep on the couch.
Not . . . this. “What are you doing in my room?”
“My room,” I corrected. “Mine. But we have bigger issues than you—” I clutched my stomach tighter and pressed my lips together as I prayed for my nausea to settle. Within seconds, Gray was there.
One hand on my waist and the other on the side of my neck. “Okay, easy,” he whispered as if he wasn’t in the same agony I was. “Let’s get—”
I shoved him away, staggering slightly to the side when I did, and tried ignoring the way my heart tripped over itself and that ache flared its unwelcome reminder. “What’d—what’d we do?” I demanded.