Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
But it made me bitter. Angry.
I hid that well, fortunately.
“She will be happy,” I agreed. I dreaded telling my mother. Because she would be ecstatic. She’d jump in the car and try to make the drive down before hanging up the phone. She’d try to inject herself into my life, into Fiona’s life. Because that’s the kind of person my mother was. She was sweet, easily excited, and had a giant heart. But she was overbearing. It had caused tension in my last marriage. A lot of it.
And that had been a real marriage.
It was already going to be hard enough around our friends and the busybodies of this fucking town. The last thing we needed was my mother scaring Fiona off all the way to fucking Australia.
“Might mend some things,” Rowan continued, not gauging just how tenuously I was holding on to my shit. “This marriage.”
“That, I doubt,” I replied.
Some things couldn’t be mended.
fiona
I didn’t remember much about my wedding reception.
On account of me getting blackout drunk.
Just like I planned.
Unfortunately, I remembered getting home.
Or parts of getting home.
Namely Kip carrying me from the car to the house.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I slurred, trying weakly to struggle. But his arms were a vise, and my limbs weren’t exactly cooperating.
Kip didn’t answer. His face was tight in my porch light, something similar to the glowering he’d been doing all night. When I looked at him, that was. I tried my best not to do that.
But we had a part to play. Our best friends were in attendance at the small wedding ceremony we’d held at the bakery.
If I had to guess, my getting wasted and Kip frowning the entire time weren’t exactly convincing them.
“You’re carrying me over the threshold?” I groaned. “Lemme down.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he muttered as we stepped inside the house.
There it was, the groom carrying the bride over the threshold.
It was so ridiculous I let out a giggle. Well, it was more of a snort. Not attractive. Then again, I didn’t need to be attractive. It wasn’t like I was planning on seducing my husband on our wedding night.
Kip moved through the house, switching on lights as he went. He’d only just moved his things in the day before, when I had thankfully been working. Giving him a set of keys was physically painful, and I didn’t need to see him settling into a space that had been mine for so long.
All day yesterday I’d been convincing myself to back out, to find other options, any other option.
There was no backing out now. I was married.
I landed on my bed, and the air came out of me in a whoosh. Kip stood above me in his suit, frowning. “You need a bowl to vomit in?”
I propped myself up on my elbows, displeased with our positions and the distribution of power between us.
Originally, I had intended on standing up and going toe-to-toe with him, but the ceiling moved dangerously with the simple act of propping myself up.
“I do not need to vomit,” I assured him. “What I need is a… grilled cheese.”
Kip quirked his brow. “You want me to make you a grilled cheese?”
“I’m not asking you to do anything for me,” I snapped. “I can make it myself.” Once I figured out how to make the ceiling stop spinning.
“You can’t stand on two feet, let alone operate anything that’s capable of setting this house on fire,” he pointed out. The asshole. “Stay here,” he said, then strode out of the room.
I tried to get up because I didn’t like being told what to do. I especially didn’t like Kip telling me what to do.
Kip.
My husband.
“Ugh,” I said out loud, falling back on the bed when I tried to get off it.
My stomach churned. I was pretty fucking wasted. By design. I knew myself well enough to know that if I didn’t eat in the next fifteen minutes, I’d be vomiting the rest of the night.
I didn’t have any snacks on my nightstand. A rookie fucking move. And the kitchen was too far away.
The room was spinning.
I was fucked.
I wasn’t sure how long I lay there staring at the ceiling, but it couldn’t have been fifteen minutes because I didn’t vomit yet.
Kip’s footfalls sounded as he walked back into the bedroom.
“You’re deluded if you think you’re sleeping in here,” I informed him, though I wasn’t in any state to properly protest him if he decided to.
He didn’t reply, just set something down on my nightstand.
I gazed lovingly at the plate with a grilled cheese. He placed water and pills next to it, but they were far less interesting.
“You made me grilled cheese?”
“Either that or you choke on your vomit in the night,” Kip said.
“Did you put arsenic in it?” I asked, sitting up.
He chuckled. “Wouldn’t be smart of me to poison my new wife on the night of our wedding.”