Chapter Three

OLIVIA'S POV

Sunlight burned through my eyelids like fire.

I groaned and tried to roll over, but my head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it. My body ached in places that made no sense.

Where was I?

I forced my eyes open.

The room spun for a second before settling into focus. Unfamiliar ceiling, unfamiliar walls, everything looked unfamiliar.

This wasn't my apartment, it wasn't Marcus's place. It wasn't anywhere I recognized.

Panic started creeping up my throat. I sat up too fast and immediately regretted it. The room tilted sideways. My stomach lurched.

I looked down at myself. I was still wearing yesterday's clothes. Wrinkled and smelling like alcohol. At least I was dressed, that was something.

Then I noticed him. A man in the bed beside me. Dark hair messy against the pillow, face I'd never seen before. Sleeping soundly beside me.

Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god.

What had I done?

My hands were shaking as I looked around the room for clues, hotel room, cheap but not terrible. Las Vegas printed on everything from the notepad to the little soaps.

Vegas. I was in Vegas.

How did I get to Vegas?

My phone was on the nightstand, dead of course. I grabbed the charger that was somehow already plugged in and connected it. I waited for it to come back to life.

That's when I saw the paper on the other nightstand with a gold seal and fancy lettering.

My heart stopped completely.

I reached across the sleeping stranger and grabbed it with trembling fingers. Read it once, twice. Three times because my brain refused to accept what my eyes were seeing.

Marriage Certificate. State of Nevada. Olivia Chen and Ethan Kane. Yesterday's date. Signed by both of us in handwriting I barely recognized as my own.

No. No no no no no.

This wasn't real. It was a terrible alcohol-induced nightmare and I was going to wake up any second in my own bed and everything would be fine.

I pinched myself. Hard enough to leave a mark, nothing changed, still in a Vegas hotel room. Still holding a marriage certificate. Still lying next to a stranger who I met at a bar who was now apparently my husband.

"Wake up." My voice came out strangled. I shook his shoulder.

"Wake up right now."

He mumbled something and tried to roll over. I shook him harder.

"I said wake up!"

His eyes opened. Confused at first, then focused on me. Then they dropped to the certificate in my hand.

I watched his face go through the same journey mine had just taken. Confusion.

"Please tell me this is a joke," he said. His voice was rough from sleep and alcohol.

"Please tell me this is some kind of prank."

I shoved the certificate at him.

"Does this look like a joke to you?"

He sat up slowly. Took the paper and read it with the same desperate hope I'd had that the words would somehow change. They didn't.

"We got married." He said it like he was testing the words. Seeing if they sounded less insane out loud. They didn't.

"We actually got married."

"How?" My voice was getting louder.

"How did this happen? I don't even know you!"

"I don't know you either!" He ran his hands through his hair.

"I don't even remember your name!"

"Olivia. It's Olivia. And yours is apparently Ethan." I pointed at the certificate.

We stared at each other. Two people who'd made the worst decision of their lives and couldn't even remember making it.

"What do you remember?" he asked finally.

"The bar." I closed my eyes. Tried to pull fragments from the alcohol-soaked fog of last night.

"I was at a dive bar in Brooklyn. Drinking a lot. You were there and we talked."

"About family," he said slowly. Memory starting to surface.

"About how marriage is a trap. About our terrible families."

More pieces clicked into place. His grandmother's will. My cheating fiancé. Hours of drinking and talking and making jokes about marrying strangers.

"Oh god." The full weight of it hit me.

"We joked about it. About marrying each other to solve our problems. It was a joke."

"Apparently we stopped joking at some point." He looked at the certificate again. "Apparently we got on a plane to Vegas and actually did it."

I remembered fragments now. Laughing in a cab, stumbling through an airport. Neon lights and Elvis and plastic flowers. His hand in mine. Saying vows I couldn't remember. A kiss that felt like it lasted too long.

Then nothing. Just waking up here with a marriage certificate and a pounding headache.

"We have to fix this," I said.

"Right now. We have to get this annulled or whatever you do to undo a drunken Vegas marriage."

"Agreed." He was already reaching for his phone.

"This was insane. We were drunk. We're strangers. This can't be legal."

"It's Vegas. Everything is legal in Vegas."

"There has to be a way to undo this. People make drunk mistakes here all the time."

Ethan was dialing.

"I'm calling my lawyer. He'll know what to do."

I plugged in my phone. Waited for it to charge enough to turn on. I tried not to think about how my life had gone from bad to catastrophic in less than twenty-four hours.

Today I'm supposed to get married. To Marcus. In a wedding I'd spent three years planning. To a man I'd loved or thought I'd loved.

But Instead yesterday I'd caught him with my sister. I ran away to a bar, met a stranger. And apparently married him in Vegas while blackout drunk.

This couldn't be my life. This was someone else's disaster, someone else's terrible choices.

But the ring on my finger said otherwise. Cheap metal from a vending machine that left a green mark on my skin. Proof that this nightmare was real.

Ethan was talking to his lawyer. I tried to listen but my phone was buzzing. Coming back to life with a flood of notifications.

Thirty missed calls. All from my mother. Text messages filled with increasing fury. Voicemails I was too scared to listen to.

Then it rang again. Her name flashing on the screen.

I stared at it, debated not answering. But she'd just keep calling until I did.

I answered.

"Mom."

"Olivia Chen, where the hell are you?" Her voice was ice and fire at the same time.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"I can explain—"

"Marcus called me. Told me everything. Said you walked in on him with another woman. Said he made a mistake but he wants to work through it." She didn't pause for breath.

"The wedding is still on. We've worked too hard for this merger to fall apart over one mistake."

The words hit me like slaps. One after another. She knew, she knew he cheated and she didn't care.

"Did you hear me?" My voice came out quiet. Dangerous.

"He cheated on me. The night before our wedding. And you want me to marry him anyway?"

"Don't be dramatic. Men make mistakes. You forgive him and move forward. The Chen and Wright families need this alliance."

"I don't care what the families need." I was standing now. Pacing.

"I'm not marrying someone who betrayed me. The wedding is cancelled."

Silence. Then her voice dropped to something colder than I'd ever heard.

"You will marry Marcus Wright tomorrow as planned. Or I will cut you off completely. No money, no  family, no support. You'll be on your own."

"Fine." The word came out steady. Sure.

"I'll be on my own then. Because I'm not marrying him."

"Olivia—"

"I can't marry Marcus, Mother." I looked at Ethan. At the marriage certificate on the bed.

"Because I'm already married. To someone else."

The silence on the other end was absolute. I could hear her breathing. Could practically see her face going through shock and rage.

"What did you just say?"