I stare at my phone as I set it on the table and look up. Trey is sitting across from me in the sports bar where we’re grabbing lunch after I stopped at the courthouse.
The phone call with Teagan has left a thick, dirty taste in my mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Trey asks.
“Nothing.” But something is. “She didn’t sound right.”
“You probably surprised her. It’s not every day a woman gets a marriage certificate couriered to her front door.”
Yeah. I rub my fingers across my forehead. “You’re probably right.”
But something doesn’t feel right.
Perhaps Teagan didn’t tell me she loves me last night, but I know she does. No one can feign the look in her eyes when I took her, like with one simple thrust of my cock into her cunt, she was also giving me her soul.
“I should go check on her,” I say to Trey.
“Don’t.” He gestures for another round of shots for us. Tequila this time. Awesome.
“You didn’t hear her.” I toss a stack of bills to pay the check onto the table.
“Settle. You’re acting like a teenager whose girl isn’t returning his first five texts. If anything, she’s nervous. I know I’d be pissing myself at the thought of marrying you. You threw her for a loop. Give her time to get used to it.”
The sooner we get married the sooner all this shit settles in my rearview and the future is only Cannon Bluffs and Teagan. I had to make some calls and pull some strings for it to be valid since she wasn’t there to sign in person, but it helps sometimes to have the Lane name, and before I leave it all in the dust, I called in one last favor.
I don’t even want to wait three more weeks to call her mine.
I blow out a heavy breath and take the tequila shot when it arrives. “Fuck off, Trey.”
He grins and clinks our glasses together. “There you go again, fascinated with my dick.”
Asshole. It’s the same shit we’ve flung at each other since freshman year. But damn it, I wouldn’t be able to survive without this guy by my side.
There’s really nothing that can fuck up this day. Teagan’s said she’ll sign the marriage certificate I sent to her. My trust is securely in my name. My father’s attempts at protesting Eleanor’s state of mind is a hassle my lawyers and I will have to deal with, but I know nothing will come of his blustering.
It’s just me and my girl, and once I slide another ring on her finger, nothing can stop us from doing all the things we’ve dreamed of.
I stay for one more round of drinks and then I switch to water so I can be sober when I get home and take Teagan into my arms. An hour later, I leave the bar and climb into my car, when my phone starts ringing.
Assuming it’s Teagan, I answer the call without checking the ID.
“Hey, angel.”
“You son of a living asshole!” Caitlin shouts in my ear. “What the hell are you thinking?”
My foot hesitates on the brake before I put the car in drive. “What the fuck, Caitlin?”
“You…I can’t even talk to you. Where are you?”
“I’m on my way home. Who pissed in your panties?” Good Lord. The girl is sometimes nutty, but she rarely freaks out like this.
“You, you son of a bitch.”
I inhale a calming breath, but it doesn’t settle the storm building in my chest, spreading to my gut. “Caitlin—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I mean, to send your dad here, of all people? That’s fucking rich, Corbin.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Caitlin. Calm down.”
“I will not calm down!” She shouts so loudly I yank the phone from my ear. “She’s gone, you asshole! And you did it to her. Get your ass back here and find her and fix this!”
I can see her seething glare as she ends the call and the phone goes silent. I’m only five minutes away from my condo, but I’m shaking.
Gone. She. Fix it. My dad?
It’s all a jumble in my head, roaring like thunder, and I don’t know what in the hell Caitlin’s problem is, but I know it’s Teagan, and somehow, something has gone horribly wrong.
“Shit,” I growl, and slam my fist to the horn, blaring it like the asshole Caitlin’s just called me, and none of the people in front of me give a crap.
The next few minutes slide by like I’m in quicksand. Multiple calls to Teagan’s phone go straight to voicemail.
The sludge taste in my throat grows until it invades my senses, and by the time I reach my condo, I’m huffing like a man who’s just run a marathon.
“Caitlin!” I shout, rushing into the kitchen. “Where the hell are you? And where’s Teagan?”
She comes out of my office, sniffing, her eyes red rimmed with tears I know she’s already wiped away. But she’s still a fire-blazing redhead, green eyes glaring at me like she wants to be the match to set me on fire.
In Caitlin’s hand is an envelope, a stack of papers on top, and she thrusts it at me.
“What in the hell is this? And why would you have your dad deliver it?”
I take the papers from her. “My dad? Caitlin I have no…oh fuck.” The words Prenuptial Agreement printed in bold across the top of the papers. The prickle at the base of my neck explodes into ice, dripping down my spine. “I didn’t…” I flip through the papers. The hell? I didn’t create this, and I sure as hell didn’t sign it.
My father. “The fucking asshole!”
We’ve been forging each other’s signatures for years, primarily for minor business purposes, not that I’d ever admit this to anyone.
I’m on fire. Burning my fingertips on the paper as if I can set it ablaze.
“You think I’d do this?” I shout at Caitlin. I toss the pile to the floor and close the distance between us. “Where’s Teagan?”
“She’s gone.” Caitlin sniffs and rolls back her shoulders. “She grabbed her stuff, shoved it into a duffel bag, and took off.”
“Caitlin, how could you think I’d give her nothing?”
The tremor in Teagan’s voice makes sense. As well as her confusion and hesitancy.
I hadn’t even considered a prenup. What’s mine is hers. Always. Forever.
Jesus. She thinks I’d do this, after everything I told her, after everything I said I wanted for her?
I can’t even tell what aches more. My friend in front of me, staring at me like I’m a stranger, or the woman I love thinking I’d have my dad of all people bring her papers saying she gets nothing from our marriage.
“I need air.” I rub my chest with my hand, but it’s pointless. My heart is pounding against my ribs, trying to escape its protective covering, and I don’t know if I want to save it.
If this is what happens when you fall in love with a woman who doesn’t love you back, who can’t see the good in you despite evidence to the contrary, then what in the hell good is a heart for anyway?
I let loose a string of curse words and slam open the sliding doors that take me to the patio outside. It’s twenty-six stories high, and the wind whips around me.
My eyes scan the horizon, and I’m searching for her. Searching for Teagan despite the fact she thinks I’d do this to her.
Several minutes later Caitlin steps up next to me.
“So,” she says, sorrow and apology in her tone. “This was just delivered.”
I glare down at her. There’s an envelope from Multnomah County in her hand. The seal is broken. The little pipsqueak next to me opened it.
“I think maybe there’s been a mistake.”
I rip it out of her hands and huff. “You think? Damn it. This is a mess.”
“What are you going to do?”
Folding the envelope and marriage certificate that arrived way, way too late, I grip it in my hand and push off the railing. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
“Find her?”
“No. I’m getting fucking drunk.”
“Corbin.”
I lift a hand and silence her. “Don’t. Don’t even think about telling me what to do right now.”
“But—”
“Honestly, Caitlin. Haven’t you done enough today?”
She shrinks into herself. I’m an asshole. Caitlin’s life has always been shitty, and not even counting the night Trey and I found the guy who was trying to rape her, she’s always had bad taste in men. We’ve never been that man to her, her brothers even more than friends, and I’d cut off my right arm before hurting Caitlin. But I just have, because she’s always been told she’s worthless, that she can’t do anything right, and I’ve just flung one of her most despised statements in her face.
Damn it.
You’re a good man, Corbin.
Don’t do that, don’t hide your heart.
It’s spectacular.
You’re so talented.
I slam my hands to my head, but I can’t silence the sound of her voice. So soft and sweet…and trusting.
Shit.
I sigh. My hands fall to my hips and I toss my head back, growling at the ceiling with the full force of my frustration. “She’s always trusted me to take care of her,” I say, more to myself than to Caitlin.
Her soft hand lands on my wrist. With wide, softened eyes, Caitlin smiles at me. “She thinks you betrayed her, Corbin. That’s what I was trying to tell you. She thinks those papers meant you’d leave her and give her nothing—”
“Leaving her with nothing like Drake has done to her.” Not like it takes a genius to figure that out.
Damn it.
I hurry to the table by the door where I threw my phone as soon as I walked in, and call Trey.
Thank God for friends who know computers and have a relaxed moral standard when it comes to private information and hacking.
“Find Teagan,” I tell him as soon as he answers.
He laughs. “You lost her?”
“No,” I snap. I don’t have time to explain myself. “Just find her. She has to be in town somewhere—”
“Whoa, slow down, spunky. Wanna clue me in on what the hell happened in the thirty minutes since we separated?”
“She left. Miscommunication and I’ll explain later, but can you find her? She has to be in her car.” Something I realize now since I didn’t see her Prius in the underground garage when I got here. “Caitlin says she left an hour ago.”
When I was drinking and toasting my upcoming marriage, my fake-turned-real fiancée was shoving clothes into a bag and thinking I had hurt her.
“Okay, okay.” Trey’s voice has the condescension of talking to a crazy person. Whatever. “Have anything else to go on?”
“Caitlin,” I snap. “Have any idea where she went?”
“No. She just said she should have done this weeks ago.”
Vomit burns deep in my throat.
“Hotels,” I bark out. “She’ll be in a hotel. Find the cheapest but safest ones. She’ll want to save money but she won’t be stupid.”
“Well she did fall in love with you,” Trey says.
I hang up the phone and dig my keys out of my pocket.
“What can I do?” Caitlin asks.
“Stay here and keep your phone charged. If she needs a friend it’s you she’ll call.”
“I don’t think she thinks of me as a friend.”
“What?” My head jerks. Of course she would. Unless…“What’d you do, Caitlin?”
She shrugs. “Nothing except tell her she was wrong about you.”
“You blamed me, too!”
“Because I was mad she took off. And she believed it so much. God, even I know you’d never send your dad to deliver that shit.”
“I didn’t.” My teeth hurt. My jaw aches. I need to fucking relax. I will.
As soon as I find my bride.
“Stay here.”