Married By Mistake

Chapter One: The Morning After

Elena's POV

My mouth tasted like a candle had melted in it.

That was the first thing I noticed.

The second thing was the ceiling. Wrong color. Wrong texture.

I sat up too fast. The room tilted, then settled into somewhere I didn't recognize.

Exposed brick. A window with no curtains. A lamp made out of an old fire hydrant.

Somewhere close by, a dog was snoring.

This wasn't my apartment. It wasn't Julian's apartment either.

And I had an engagement party in twelve hours.

I was still in last night's dress, twisted around my hips like it had given up on me. My shoes were gone. My clutch sat open on the floor.

A receipt. A lipstick. And something stiff and cream colored that didn't belong to me.

I picked it up before my brain finished deciding that was a bad idea.

CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE.

My name first. Elena Rose Voss. My handwriting, shaky but mine, signed at the bottom.

Then the other name.

Jackson Romero.

I didn't know a Jackson Romero. My brain offered nothing. No face. No memory. Just a low, sick hum that got louder the longer I stared at the date.

Last night's date.

The dog snored again, closer now. I realized two things at once.

First, the sound was coming from behind the couch. Second, I wasn't alone in this apartment.

"Okay, so, before you scream," a voice said from the doorway, "I want it on record that I did not see this coming either."

I turned. A man stood there holding two mugs of coffee like a peace offering. Sweatpants. A shirt that said WALK THIS WAY over a cartoon golden retriever.

His hair looked like it had lost a fight with a pillow.

"Who are you," I said. It came out flat.

"Jax." He set one mug down. Kept the other. "You're Elena. It's on the thing you're holding. Also you told me four times last night, very seriously, like you were worried I'd forget."

"I'm not asking for my own name."

"Right. Fair." He sat across from me, an actual careful distance away. I noticed that and didn't know what to do with it. "We got married. I'm freaked out too, for what it's worth."

"You don't look freaked out."

"I look freaked out on the inside. It's a skill."

I looked back at the certificate. It hadn't changed. The signatures were still there.

Mine, tilted and looping in a way I never let it look. His, quick and slanted, like he'd signed a hundred things that day.

"There has to be a way to undo this," I said.

"There is. Annulment. I looked it up at like six a.m. while you were asleep on my arm. Side note, you drool a little. It was cute—"

"Please don't."

"Sorry. Nerves."

I set the certificate down like it might bite me. My head pounded, and it had nothing to do with the hangover.

My life had a hole punched through it sometime around midnight, and I had no idea what fell through.

"Where did we even meet," I said.

"You don't remember?"

"If I remembered I wouldn't be asking."

"Right." He rubbed the back of his neck. For one second his hand moved in a strange, precise little pattern against his own skin, like he was counting something out.

Then it stopped. He reached for his coffee like nothing happened.

"Your work thing. The gala. I was there because a client of mine dog-sits for one of your caterers, long story. You were standing by the bar looking like you'd rather be anywhere else on earth. I said something dumb. You laughed. Then it was eleven and we were doing tequila shots with a bartender named Reggie."

"I don't do tequila shots."

"You did four."

I pressed the heel of my hand against my eye socket. Somewhere in last night's wreckage was a version of me who made every decision I'd never make sober.

I resented her.

"I have an engagement party tonight," I said, mostly to myself.

The words landed in the room like something breaking.

"You're engaged," Jax said. Not a question. His voice had gone careful.

"To Julian Croft." I said the name like it might steady me. Like its size could hold the room still. "We're getting married in April."

He was quiet a beat too long. Then he laughed, short and disbelieving, and dragged a hand down his face.

"Of course you are," he said. "Of course."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing. It means I woke up married to a woman who's already engaged to someone else, and I'm trying to find the part of that where I'm not the worst decision either of us made this year."

I stood up too fast again. The room tilted. I braced a hand on the couch and finally looked around properly.

Mismatched furniture. A leash by the door. A framed photo on the wall I couldn't quite focus on from here. Something about the angle of a hand on a keyboard snagged at my attention, then let go.

"I need to go," I said. "Right now, before anyone knows I was ever gone."

"Yeah. That's probably smart." He stood too. For a second neither of us moved. Two strangers in wrinkled clothes, standing in the wreckage of a decision we couldn't remember making.

"We'll fix this," he said. "Courthouse opens at nine. We go in, we explain. They've probably seen worse."

"They have not seen worse than this."

"You'd be surprised what Reggie's seen."

I didn't laugh. But something in my chest loosened half a degree, and that annoyed me almost as much as the marriage certificate did.

I found my shoes by the door. My phone was in my coat pocket, the coat hanging neatly on a hook, the only neat thing in the entire apartment.

Eleven missed calls. Six texts. My stomach dropped before I opened any of them.

The most recent notification filled the screen before I could stop it.

Julian Croft: Where are you? Everyone's asking. I told them you'd be here by nine. Call me back the second you see this.

Sent forty minutes ago.

And underneath it, lighting up fresh, his name again. Calling me right now.

At the exact moment I stood barefoot in a stranger's apartment, holding a marriage certificate that wasn't his.