Talon(25)

I fight back the tears burning my eyes. "Yeah, and I asked for a clean-cut, good-looking, sweet, intelligent, hard-working family man. Instead, I got inked-up Tarzan."

"We got fucked. Hard."

"Do you think they made a mistake?" I suggest hopefully. "Maybe put us with the wrong partner? There are other couples in the project."

He thinks about this for a few moments while chewing his lip. "I dunno. Both our names are on that card. It would be hard to confuse us with other people; we both have very unique names. Seems like the only damn thing we do have in common."

Sitting next to him on the couch, I pull my legs up and hug my knees to my chest. "I don't understand any of this. What were they thinking?"

"I have no fucking idea, but I'm gonna find out."

"How exactly are you going to do that? It's after midnight."

Grabbing his cell phone, he pushes a button. "My mom's part of the project team. I'll get some answers out of her."

"What?! Your mom?" How is his mother involved? Isn't that a conflict of interest of some sort?

As he paces the floor waiting for the call to connect, I silently pray this is all a mistake and my real husband is somewhere nearby and will come save me. Then hopefully, Talon will get his correct wife, and we can all walk away from this happy.

Chapter 9

Talon

"Sweetheart, you better have a good reason for calling me on your wedding night. Shouldn't you be occupied right now?"

"What the fuck, Mom? Is this some kind of joke?"

"Talon, lower your voice. What's wrong?"

"You know what's wrong. This. This entire mess," I seethe, exasperated. "We have nothing in common. Zero. Zilch. Nada. She hates me. She hates the way I look. And she's not what I wanted either. I wanted a tall, blond model type. She's too…cute for me. She's short. And she hates to travel. And she's got, like, no tits." Asia winces as I rattle off my list.

My mother sighs into the phone. "Honey, calm down. There is way much more to this than what you two are seeing on the surface. Right now, you're just focusing on looks and trivial things. And that's to be expected. We talked about this in the sessions, remember? That it would take a while to get used to the other person."

"I know, but come on! We got nothing here!"

"Talon, get your shit together." My father has taken the phone from my mother. Crap. "You don't talk about women like that, especially your wife. You both agreed to this, and you've been together for less than six hours. Calm the hell down and give it time. Relationships take work. You don't just add water and stir."