To find out if we really gotmarried, and if so, to undo it. To scrub our lives clean of these mistakes and move forward.
“Can you hurry this up?” I snap, my head pounding even worse than when I woke. I’m a walking bruise. A single throbbing brain cell. “We’re on the clock here, Effie.”
“Oh,sorry.” Her voice is faint, echoing against porcelain, and I already regret my words. She’s still halfway down the toilet bowl, and I’m a dick. “Shall I die faster for you, boss?”
I suck in a slow breath, throat clogged with shame and irritation andfear.
Did I say anything to her last night? What if she remembers and I don’t? What if we can’t undo what we’ve done?
“The lobby,” I grit out, rubbing at my chest. “Thirty minutes. Don’t be late. We’re going to retrace our steps.”
Effie
Almost an hour later, we stand on the sidewalk outside Original Sin, the nightclub our client chose for our big meeting yesterday. By day it’s still glitzy and cool, a cathedral of bad behavior sandwiched between two casinos, but now the neon lights are dimmed and there’s no pounding music. At midday, it’s the calm between storms.
“How fitting.” Mr Coltrane scowls up at the club’s name, his face pale beneath his sunglasses. I’m wearing mine too, sheltering from the blisteringly bright sunshine, and in the shiny club window, we look like two wretched bugs. We’d surely be leaning on each for support if we didn’t hate each other’s guts.
“He won’t still be here.” My throat is sore from throwing up, my teeth scrubbed with vicious lashings of mint toothpaste. I still aim my words away from him, just in case.
My boss turns his glare on me. “Do you have a better idea, Effie? Or do you maybe remember something from later in the night?”
Nope. I do not. And I don’t appreciate the accusatory tone—as thoughIplanned all this somehow.Iorchestrated this whole mess, got my boss stinking drunk and tricked him into some quickie wedding. He wishes.
“Fine. Let’s go in and ask. But if they laugh us out of there, Mr Coltrane—”
“Guy.” He looks so pained, gazing up at the nightclub again like he’s staring into the abyss. A tortured soul in designer sunglasses. “Your husband’s name is Guy.”
My stomach lurches. “Oh shutup.”
I’m used to trailing this man through buildings. Blending into the background and leaving him to do the talking as he schmoozes with clients, making deals left and right. But Mr Coltrane is usually calm and cool, all slick confidence and irritating sex appeal, everyone around us scurrying to do his will.
Thisman grips the edge of the bar to keep his balance, his strong fingers clutching at the dark wood. His breaths are suspiciously slow and measured.
“Yeah, Jensen comes here all the time.” The bartender’s happy enough to talk, his tired eyes roaming over us with mild curiosity as he restocks a fridge. With his black shirt and long gray hair pulled back in a low bun, he looks kind of like a pirate.
That tracks. This room is all dark wood and secret alcoves; glittering chandeliers and cloudy brass-framed mirrors.
When his eyes settle on me for a beat too long, I shuffle closer to Mr Coltrane’s—toGuy’sside.
“Bet he loved you.” The pirate leers, bottles clinking as he shoves more on the shelf. He’s barely watching what he’s doing, too busy trying to see through my dress. “Always after a thrill, Jensen, and you look like one hell of a ride.”
I clamp my teeth together, fighting the urge to throw up all over the bar. And Guy growls beside me before rapping on the wood. “Hey! Watch yourself. That’s my wife.”
Oh, ew. Dick measuring turns my stomach at the best of times, but right now? When I’m flushed and clammy and trying not to puke?
“Shut up,” I rasp at my boss. Then, at the creepy bartender: “Do you know what we did here last night? Who we were with and when we left?”
The man frowns, glancing at a camera lens tucked discreetly in the corner of the ceiling. “Well, there are the security tapes. But I don’t keep track of individual customers. We’re busy, you know?”
“Sure.” I flop against the bar, twirling my freshly washed hair, aiming for ‘cute’ and landing on ‘desperate’. Somewhere over my head, Guy snorts. “Do you think we could watch them? Something happened to us last night. We don’t rememberanything.”
The bartender sighs, scratching at his throat. Faded black tattoos wind around his knuckles. “I need to finish up here. But if I set you up in the back room…”
“We’ll be good.” I try to give him my brightest smile, the one I use when Guy is pissy about me being late to a meeting. The bartender blinks at me, and Guy stiffens and presses closer to my side. “I’d be so, so grateful for your help,” I breathe.
Yeah, that does it. And maybe I’d feel bad about leading this man on if he hadn’t been so gross.
“Lay it on thicker, why don’t you?” Guy mutters to me as the bartender flicks a dish cloth over his shoulder, squeezing his bulk from behind the bar. “I thought I’d avoided throwing up, but maybe not.”