Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 87255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
I stop on a picture of Renn and me in front of a black-haired, lip-curled man holding a book—a Bible, to be exact.
Renn has his arms around my waist, his hands locked at the small of my back. I have no idea what he’s saying, but my face is scrunched in a laugh that makes me smile. The way he’s looking at me makes my chest tighten.
His eyes are bright and pinched at the corners. His smile stretches across his face. There’s a gentleness in his hard exterior, happiness—a carefree vibe in his features. Oh, Renn. What did we do?
“Do you remember that?” Ella asks softly.
I shake my head. I wish I did.
I give her phone back to her. “So how pissed is Brock?”
“Oh, he’s livid. He was ready to tear Renn’s limbs off and beat him with them.”
Yikes.
“But don’t worry about him, Blakely. You need to worry about yourself and what you need to do. Brock’s a big boy. He’ll deal with this—you know that. He’s always on your side.”
I shift my gaze away from her.
That’s easy for her to say—to not worry about my brother. But she wasn’t there when the fallout of dating Edward landed partially on Brock. She didn’t watch him feel handcuffed by the situation, wanting desperately to help me but feeling the pressure from his team and managers not to get too publicly involved. It was almost as hard on him as it was for me. And I still feel terrible about that.
“I don’t want this to affect him,” I say.
She smiles. “I think that’s the last thing he’s worried about this morning.”
I press my fingertips against my eyelids and blow out a breath.
“What do you want to do?” Ella asks. “We need a game plan. I’m here to ride this out with you, but I need to know what way we’re rolling with it so I can prepare for battle.”
My lips quiver. This sucks so bad. But at least Ella is here.
“Nope. Don’t start crying,” she says. “I swear to all that’s holy that if you make me get emotional about this, I’ll never forgive you.”
I laugh, choking back the sob that wants to escape. Thanks, tequila.
“Do you think you need an attorney?” she asks. “I can call my dad and see if he can help us find one. He usually knows someone who knows someone.”
“I don’t need an attorney … right?” Do I? “I just want to get this thing annulled as quickly and quietly as possible. It’s not like we’re really married.”
Ella nods as if she’s just going along with me.
“Look up annulments—or hell, canceling a marriage license,” I say. “There has to be a way for people who wake up married in Vegas to end it. This has to happen all the time.”
“Uh-huh.” She types into her phone. “I hope you’re right.”
I lay my head back and close my eyes.
Thankfully, my stomach has settled. The ache in my head isn’t as sharp as when I woke up. But the stress in my neck that I managed to shed last night is back—with a vengeance.
I’m married. I snort. This is not the birthday memory I wanted to make.
“All right,” Ella says. “There are two types of marriages you can annul in Vegas. One is void marriages and the other is voidable marriages.”
“Gimme. How do I void this?”
“You don’t have a void marriage because neither of you were already married, and you aren’t closely related.”
I make a face. “Nope. We’re not. What’s the other kind?”
“Voidable marriages are those without consent if under age, lack of understanding, mental incompetence, and the existence of fraud.”
I sit up and turn off the tap. Water sloshes around me. “That’s it. Lack of understanding. Clearly, we didn’t know what we were doing.”
Relief floods through me. My shoulders slump. Thank God for the internet.
“Not so fast,” Ella says, grimacing. “Keep in mind that I’m on a random lawyer’s website, okay? So I could be wrong. He could be wrong for all I know. But I think this says that if you have a spur-of-the-moment wedding and regret it, that’s hard to prove in court.”
“In court? I don’t want this going to court.”
She sets the phone on her lap and winces. “It looks like the fastest you can get this taken care of is one to three weeks—if you can get it annulled.”
“And what if we can’t?”
“Then you have to get a divorce.”
I stare at my friend as if she will suddenly spit out the answers I want to hear—that this will be quick, easy, and quiet. But she fails me.
No, I failed me.
This is no one’s fault but my own. And as bad as this will suck for me, I know it will suck for Renn even more. There goes his good boy clause.
The only way out of this is to get to the courthouse. The sooner we start the dissolution of our accidental marriage, the sooner it’s over. Because if I know one thing, I know this—I don’t want to be Mrs. Brewer.