think it’s fucked up. First of all, we are fake married. Secondly, you’ve described Will as a fun, adventurous, spontaneous person. And you’re spending this week doing things Will loved, to honor him.” I placed my palm flat on his chest. “On a whim, you agreed to get married to me. What would he have said to that?”
He thought for a moment. “He would’ve been proud, probably. He was always getting on my case for not being more carefree.”
“You’re a risk assessor.” I leaned forward and popped a kiss on his nose. “Not necessarily a risk taker.”
“Right. He would have been surprised, for sure. But not in a bad way.” He looked me over for a moment and stifled a yawn. “He’d have liked you. A lot. Probably would have tried to steal you in the bar if he’d been there with me.” The thought seemed to weigh heavily on him.
“I had my sights set on you the moment I saw you,” I told him in a moment of absolute honesty. “You’re going to his parents’ tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at the clock. “We should probably get some sleep at some point.”
There were two beds in the room, but neither of us moved to separate. Instead, we moved so our heads were actually on the pillows and our bodies under the sheets. It felt perfectly comfortable to snuggle with him like this. There were no expectations from either of us, except to sleep.
And so we did.
I awoke to an angry buzzing. Blinking, I squinted to where the offending noise was coming from and watched my clutch as it slid off the table I’d set it on the night before. My phone.
My head was pounding from dehydration and lack of sleep, so shifting from beneath the covers felt like it took every single muscle in my body.
At some point during the night, I’d turned to Liam and curled up on him. He was still knocked out, his breaths even, as I crawled across the bed and fell to the floor.
“Fuck,” I whispered to no one in particular. I’d have a good bruise from that. Rubbing my knee, I reached for my clutch with the other hand and dumped its contents until my phone clattered to the carpet beneath me.
There were over a dozen texts, from half a dozen people. Without reading the messages, I went down the list of names: Mom, Dad, James, Hollis, Bekka, and Lauren.
Shit.
I rubbed my palm against my eyes, dislodging a few sleepy seeds as I struggled to get my vision to stop blurring. We hadn’t closed the curtains the night before, so light flooded the room in what I might’ve likened to a warm glow if it didn’t feel like an icepick to my forehead. I needed acetaminophen and caffeine ASAP.
I read Hollis’s message first.
Hollis: You got MARRIED?! VICTORIA RENEE MCLAUGHLIN. ANSWER YOUR PHONE.
And really, that one message was all it took for my body to come completely alive—my memory finally catching up to what had happened the night before. What the fuck? How did Hollis know?
A quick glance at the other messages from my parents and brother assured me that they, too, knew I’d gotten married. But how?
I opened Bekka’s message next.
Bekka: I’m so sorry. Katy is such a bitch. She’s already left for the airport, or I’d make her apologize in person. :(
I didn’t like the sound of that. Spying the large number of notifications on my Facebook app, I clicked it open and before I could even go to my notifications, I saw exactly what everyone else had seen. A photo of Liam and I, facing one another in front of the minister, grinning broadly at one another.
I was not lucid enough for this. I dropped the phone and then my forehead hit the carpet with a dull, unsatisfying thud. “No, no, no,” I chanted over and over as I tried to knock some working brain cells together in order to figure out how to fix this situation.
The phone rang, but I silenced it with a vicious tap to the home button. Not now, hell no.
“Tori?”
I turned my head, squinting against the bright sunlight.
“What are you doing on the floor?”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “Trying to connect a few brain cells together.”
“You must have more than a few since you’re still forming coherent sentences.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “I’m going to be in so much shit.”
“Why?” He climbed out of bed and it was then that I noticed he’d removed his shirt at some point