Chapter 19 Annabelle
Annabelle
I wrap myself in a towel and sit on the edge of the tub, hair dripping onto my knees, unsure why I suddenly feel like crying.
It’s not sadness, exactly. Not joy either. Something like homesickness? Only I’m not sure what I’m homesick for . . .
There is literally nothing at home for me. And Lucy is in Arizona with her new boyfriend, living it up, so not even that.
Damn Maverick.
Why did he have to go and kiss me harder than I’ve ever been kissed before?
Why did we have to have so much fun, even though we were forced together?
Why did he have to act so cool about being accidentally married to me?
A man who actually listens when I talk, loves puzzles, and is afraid of storms. And don’t get me started on his Scottish roots . . .
This cabin is a fantasy. A beautiful, ridiculous dream, and we both know it.
But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to curl up in it and never leave.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and pull a face.
My cheeks are flushed. My eyes look sad.
Ugh. I towel off, shimmy into a pair of cotton shorts and an oversize hoodie—the kind that swallows me whole—and let my wet hair hang down around my shoulders to air dry.
When I’m done slathering my face with moisturizer and lotions, I return to the living room, only to find Mav out on the deck, gazing out into the sky.
Shoot.
Not a storm . . .
The horizon is starting to darken, bruised clouds gathering over the water. Just a little weather. A passing tantrum from the lake.
I slide the door open and step out barefoot, the deck cool against my soles.
“You okay?” I ask, careful not to spook the moment, ’cause we have more important things to talk about.
“Hey,” he says with a nod. “Just watching the weather roll in.”
He’s putting on a brave face, but I can see the worry as I plop down beside him.
“You scared?” I nudge my knee against his.
“Eh.” His eyes flick toward me. “Little bit.”
We sit in silence, the air thick with that postshower, prestorm stillness. My hair’s already starting to dry, the breeze picking up a few strands and tossing them around my face.
“Did your trainer say anything new?” I ask, just to break the quiet.
“He said to ice the knee tonight. That I shouldn’t overdo it.” Maverick laughs under his breath. “Guess we’ll have to stick to indoor cardio.” A beat. Then he glances sideways at me. “You know what’s weird?”
“What?”
“This.” He gestures between us. “How easy this feels.”
I nod slowly, the tight knot in my stomach giving just a little. “I was thinking that too.” How I don’t want to go home; not now, not in a few days when the rental is up.
“Annabelle?”
“Hmm?”
“What if we didn’t undo it?”
The knot in my stomach cinches tighter and then slowly starts to loosen, unraveling into something warmer, scarier, more impossible.
“What does that mean? There is no marriage certificate—we’re fine.” I turn my body to face him, folding my legs beneath me. “Why would you want to stay married?”
His mouth quirks. “You said it earlier—when we go back to real life, I go back to football and you go back to weddings. But what if we’re not supposed to go back the same way?”
The sky growls, low and distant. I tuck my knees to my chest. “I don’t know if I’m built for your world,” I whisper.
Maverick snorts. “Of course you’re cut out for it. You’re so fucking awesome.” He inhales a breath. “Also, I uh—kind of have something to tell you.”
Oh? That gets my attention. “What?”
“So, uh. When you were in the shower, I was checking messages, and honestly—had a shit ton of them. You should check your phone too. I bet you have a lot.”
I crane my head. My cell rests on the coffee table, and I have no desire to haul my ass to the living room to retrieve it now that I’m settled into this chair.
I stare at my new fake husband expectantly. “What do you have to tell me?”
He fidgets. “Our fake marriage has gone viral.”
A beat of silence stretches.
I blink.
Blink some more.
“What do you mean? What went viral?”
Maverick runs a hand through his hair, clearly bracing for impact.
“It means Cousin Evy posted a photo with us in it—and although she didn’t tag me, a shit ton of other people did, and now .
. .” He shrugs helplessly. “She got forty-two thousand likes on her post, and she only has eight hundred followers. I’m sure she’s freaking the fuck out right now. ”
I gape at him. “Forty-two thousand likes?” My brain cannot compute. “On one photo?”
“Well, no. She posted a slideshow of her cousin’s wedding.”
My stomach drops. “Are we in the background?”
“Front and center in at least three,” he says sheepishly. “You’re feeding me cake. I’m licking frosting off your ring finger. It’s a whole thing.”
“But no one knew our real names.”
Maverick laughs. “Babe. We won the Super Bowl last year.”
We won the Super Bowl last year . . .
“Anyway,” he continues. “My agent called.”
His agent called. Of course he has an agent—duh. And probably a publicist. And a manager. And . . . and . . .
I stand and pace the deck. “Okay. So your agent knows. Does he hate me?”
“It’s a she, and no. No one hates you. Yet.”
“Yet?” My eyes bug out of my skull.
“I’m kidding!” he says. “She wants to chat. Said something about ‘narrative control’ and ‘capitalizing on momentum’ and ‘Instagram strategy’—I tuned out.”
“Capitalizing?” My voice cracks. “Like—this is good for your career?”
“Could be,” he says with a shrug. “Depends how we spin it.”
Spin it?
Spin It?
I whip around toward him. “We’re not spinning anything! I’m a small-town wedding planner who accidentally fake married a professional athlete, who banged him on the beach in the middle of the night and has photos of myself getting licked!”
Maverick barks out a laugh. “You have to put that on a business card.”
“Oh my God—are you enjoying this?”
“Obviously.” He laughs again. “The world knows, Annabelle. We might as well make the most of it.”
“Make the most of it? How?” I’m stunned for various reasons, the main one being: This man wants to stay fake married. To Me?
Little me from the middle of nowhere?
“Come to Arizona with me,” he goes on. “Thirty days. You can work remotely and do video appointments. And after those thirty days we either never speak to each other again or we make it official.”
Official.
I stare at him, doing my best to keep my jaw from dropping open.
He wants to pretend we’re actually married? Because the media caught wind of it?
I can hardly wrap my brain around that, to begin with. Me, Annabelle Franklin, all over the sports news. Like—what? What planet am I living on?
As if Maverick senses my hesitation, he continues. “We’ll go to your apartment tomorrow, pack enough of your things for a few weeks and get you situated. Then you can come to Arizona.”
“Get me situated?”
Maverick shrugs, like he didn’t just suggest uprooting my entire life—not that there’s a ton to uproot. “You’ll need your laptop, chargers, favorite pillow—whatever you can’t live without for a month.”
“My sanity feels like a top contender . . .”
He grins, undeterred. “Bring that too.”
I cross my arms. “You’re being serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“And you think this is normal?”
“Babe. What’s normal anymore?”
True. He has a point . . .
That’s how we end up at my apartment.
Maverick stands in the middle of my tiny living room like a yeti trying not to knock over furniture. He’s way too big for this space. His head almost brushes the ceiling fan, and his duffel bag looks comically out of place next to my floral area rug and mason jar vase full of fake peonies.
“This is . . . cozy,” he says diplomatically, eyeing the bookshelf, which has paperbacks stacked on it, the basket of laundry I did not fold, and the bar cart I had to have but never use.
“Thanks.” I start gathering the essentials—laptop, chargers, toiletries, a handful of comfy clothes, and my favorite throw blanket.
He crouches by the bookshelf, picking up a well-worn paperback and flipping it over. “You’ve got, like, five books with shirtless dudes on the cover.”
“Correction, most of them have shirtless dudes on the cover.”
He grins, thumbing through one. I toss a pair of sweatpants into my duffel and snatch the book out of his hands.
Maverick lifts a brow as his eyes skim the page. “I just made a mental note to growl more often.”
“Please don’t.”
Too late—he growls. Full-on, deep and exaggerated, like a bear. Then he clears his throat and adopts the Scottish accent again. “I’ll be readin’ this one by candlelight, lass.”
This perks me up. Is it possible he’s a romantic? “Oh, you’re a candlelight kind of guy?”
“Aye.” He leans against the bookshelf. “Me and”—he looks at the cover again to see the title—“Highlander’s Forbidden Desire, alone under the stars.”
I snort. “You’d be so lucky.”
Before he can fire back, my phone buzzes in my back pocket, and I pull it out to see Lucy’s name lighting up the screen with her contact photo: a blurry selfie of the two of us mid-laugh, our faces smushed together. Ahh, good times, good times . . .
I swipe to answer. “Hey, hang on—”
I wave a hand toward Maverick as I back out of the room to take the call in the safety of my bedroom.
It’s Lucy, I mouth, pointing to the phone.
He nods, already ignoring me, lost in whatever steamy part of the book he’s found.
Lucky him.
I shut the door behind me and press the phone to my ear. “What’s up?”
Be cool. Be nonchalant. When you’re ready, you can tell your best friend that you—
“Are You Freaking Married?” she shouts from the other end of the phone, screeching so loud I pull the device away from my face and stare at the screen.
“Annabelle Franklin, Are You Freaking Serious?” she continues shouting. “You Go on One Staycation and Shack up With One of the Most Famous Linebackers in the Freaking Country? Who Are You?”
So much ground to cover. “Listen. It was an accident—and it’s not legal.” I laugh, looking over at the suitcase on my bed, half packed with clothes and toiletries, enough for thirty days in Arizona.
“Not legal?” she yells. “Your face is plastered all over the damn internet and the news. The media is having a field day with this.”
Dang. Lucy is normally so soft spoken.
“We were drunk.”
“Apparently.” She cackles. “Know what I’m pissed about?”
So many things. “No, but I bet you’re going to tell me . . .”
“That you never called! Did it occur to you that I might want to be there?”
I pull the phone away again, staring at it. “Lucy, I just told you—we were drunk. In the moment. The officiant who married us was the bride’s cousin and a youth pastor.”
“Bride’s cousin?” I hear the confusion in her voice.
“We crashed a wedding at Moonlight at Star Lake.”
“You what?” Her horrification amps up a notch at my audacity. “Who Are You?”
“Mrs. McBride, apparently.”
“You’re not funny, Annabelle. I’m coming home, and we’re going to—”
I shake my head. “Too late, I’m packing for Arizona.”
This gives her pause. “You are?”
I nod. “He’s not ready to . . . call it quits yet. Apparently he can’t get enough of me,” I joke.
“You married a linebacker.”
“So? You’re dating one too.” I point out.
“You’re moving in with a linebacker.”
“Temporarily!”
“For a Month?”
“Think of it like . . . experimental cohabitation. Research for science purposes.”
Lucy huffs. Then: “You’re going to fall for him.”
“I’m not,” I say quickly. Too quickly, because it may be too late for that.
“Annabelle—I love you and I support you, and Lord knows this may be partly my fault for pushing you into this trip. But you do not know this guy!”
“Pot to kettle! You jetted off to Arizona after knowing Harris for, what, one week? It’s the same amount of time!”
She makes a scoffing sound. “We’re not married—we’re dating.”
“How many times must I remind you this is not legally binding?”
“Do you have a ring on your finger?”
I glance down at the ring on my finger, then pull my arm behind my back to avoid its sparkly glare.
When I don’t respond, Lucy exhales. “Annabelle, sweetie. Darling. Newlywed by accident. The world thinks you’re legally married. He thinks you’re legally married. Which means, even if this is just a joke to you, it’s very real to everyone el—”
“It’s not a joke!” I snap, immediately wincing at how loud it came out. I look at the door, waiting several beats in case Maverick comes busting through it. “I mean. It started as one. Kind of. A sexy, tequila-fueled, moonlit oopsie. But now . . .”
My best friend waits me out.
“It’s not.”
“His name is Maverick.” She snorts.
“It’s not. His name is Callum,” I say quietly. “And he’s Scottish.”
I can practically hear Lucy leaning into the phone. “What’s this now? You know how I feel about accents.”
“Yes,” I groan. “You once told a British guy in town for a regatta that you were ovulating because he asked if you were ‘bloody hot in that jumper.’”
“I was bloody hot in that sweater. It was seventy degrees, and he was sexy!”
“Well, Callum says things like lass and reckon and yer bonnie mouth is gonna get you in trouble.”
Lucy goes completely silent.
“Hello?”
“Sorry, I blacked out for a second. I think I need a cold shower.”
“Tell me about it,” I say, flopping face down on my bed.
“Well, it’s settled then. You have my approval.”