Vows Written in whiskey

Chapter3:A ring I never chose

Chapter Three: A Ring I Never Chose

I woke with the sun stabbing my eyes and a headache that felt like a marching band inside my skull.

I groaned and rolled over, burying my face in a pillow softer than any pillow I owned. That was the first wrong thing. My pillow is flat and lumpy and smells of cheap detergent. This one smelled of clean cotton and something warm, like a man's skin.

That was the second wrong thing.

I peeled one eye open.

The ceiling was too high. The window was too big. Through it I could see, not the grey harbour and the seagulls, but rolling green hills, a fake volcano, and a pool the size of a small ocean.

I sat straight up, and the sheet fell away, and I realised I was completely, entirely naked.

"Okay," I whispered to myself. "Okay. Don't panic. Panic is for people who don't have jobs at Halcyon."

I lifted a hand to rub my aching forehead, and something cold and hard touched my nose.

I froze.

Slowly, so slowly, I pulled my hand back and looked.

On my finger, catching the morning light, sat a diamond so big it looked fake. It threw little rainbows across the wall. I stared at it, and my stomach dropped through the bed, through the floor, through the whole earth.

"No," I breathed. "No, no, no."

I clutched the sheet to my chest and scrambled out of the bed. Clothes were everywhere. My red dress hung off a lamp. A man's shirt lay crumpled by the door. His trousers. My shoe. One of my earrings on the carpet.

I stumbled to the window and pressed my hand against the cold glass.

"This is not Cape Town," I said out loud, as if saying it would make it not true. "Where in the world am I?"

"Good morning," a deep voice said behind me.

I spun around so fast I nearly fell, a squeak flying out of my mouth.

Xander stood in the doorway of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a pair of dark boxers, one hand pressed to his temple like his head hurt as much as mine. His hair was a mess. There were shadows under those grey eyes. He looked terrible.

He also looked, unfairly, still beautiful.

"You," I said, backing hard against the window.

"Me," he agreed, wincing at the sound of his own voice.

"Where are we?"

He looked past me, out at the volcano and the pool. His jaw went tight.

"Sun City, I think," he said.

I stared at him. Sun City. The big resort. Hours and hours from home, past the mountains, over the border of the whole province.

"Sun City?" I said. "How? We were eating a Gatsby. On a plastic chair. There was a blue light."

"I remember the blue light," he said slowly. "After that... nothing. It's blank." He rubbed his face with both hands. "I don't remember a single thing after we left that shop."

"Neither do I," I whispered. My whole body had gone cold. "Xander, why am I wearing a ring?"

He went very still. Then he lifted his own left hand.

There, on his finger, sat a plain gold band.

The room started to spin, and not from the drink this time.

"No," I said. "No. Tell me we didn't."

He walked slowly to the bedside table, picked up a folded paper, and read it. All the colour drained from his face. He held it out to me without a word.

My hands shook so hard I could barely open it. The words swam, then came into focus.

Certificate of Marriage.

And below that, two signatures, crooked and messy, but clear enough.

Khloe Vincent. Nicholas Xander Mitchell.

The paper slipped from my fingers.

"We got married," I said. My voice sounded far away, like someone else was speaking. "We got drunk, and we came all the way to Sun City, and we got married, and I don't remember any of it."

"Khloe." He took a step toward me. "Just breathe."

"Don't tell me to breathe!" The words came out louder than I meant. My eyes were burning. "I have a job on Monday. I have a mother in hospital. I have a sister who needs her fees. I do not have time to be married to a stranger I met at a bar!"

"You think I planned this?" He raked a hand through his hair. "You think this is what I do on my weekends? I have never done anything like this in my life. Never."

"Then how did it happen?"

"I don't know!" he said, and then he pressed a hand to his skull and lowered his voice. "I don't know. But standing here shouting about it won't undo it."

I sat down hard on the edge of the bed, the sheet wrapped around me, and put my face in my hands.

For a long moment neither of us spoke. Then the bed dipped as he sat beside me, careful to keep a space between us.

"Listen," he said, gentler now. "We are not the first two fools to wake up married in a place like this. We will get it annulled. Quietly. My lawyer can start today. In a week it will be like it never happened, and you can go to your job, and your life, and forget you ever met me."

I lifted my head. His grey eyes were steady on mine, and there was something in them, under the tiredness, that I couldn't quite read.

"You promise?" I said. "It stays between us? Nobody finds out?"

"Nobody finds out," he said. "You have my word."

I wanted to believe him. I truly did.

But somewhere far off, in the pocket of the trousers on the floor, his phone began to ring, sharp and insistent, and the name that lit up the screen made his whole body go stiff, and he stared at it like the phone had turned into a snake.