Accidentally Wild (The Wilder Brothers)

I watched him nod as I leaned my back against the windows.

“Okay. So, if annulment is off the table, then we divorce. Does Nevada have uncontested divorce policies?” I asked.

“You didn’t know about annulments, but you know about uncontested divorces?” he asked.

“Doesn’t everyone? It’s just a divorce where both parties consent.”

“Anyway. It doesn’t matter. Yes, I think Nevada has uncontested divorces.”

“Good! That’s good. We can get the paperwork, track down a lawyer, get it worked up, get it filed. Maybe we’ll have to fly back to be seen in court for thirty minutes or something, and it’s done.”

“That’s fine with me. But what do you want to do until then?”

“What do you mean?”

“We have rings. We’re married. What do you want to do with the rest of the trip? We’re here for two more days. And I highly doubt we’ll be able to do much of this while we’re here. Which means I’ll need to be on the phone with lawyers figuring out how this is going to work without any of my brothers realizing what’s going on.”

“And if Jessica gets a hold on what’s happened, I’m never going to live it down. Not to mention she’ll harass you until the day is done and over again,” I said.

Then, another thought occurred to me.

“How many people in the hotel do you think know we got married last night?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Everett asked.

“You said they had logs downstairs. How many employees do you think know we got married?”

“Who cares if they know? They just can’t say anything about it.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. What if we start doing things around the hotel and someone refers to me as ‘Mrs. Wilder’ or something like that?”

“They could refer to me as ‘Mr. Faith’ if we want to be that progressive married couple.”

“Stop it, Everett. This is serious,” I said. But his chuckle was so soothing to my ears.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just… really trying to lighten this up a little bit.”

“Well, don’t. Because this is serious.”

“I know it’s serious. But the first step we can take is not wearing these rings. They’re cheap anyway. Not nearly the kind of ring I would ever buy my fiancée.”

I watched him work it off his finger and I didn’t have the reaction I thought I would. I looked down at my ring and wiggled it around on my finger, then looked back up and watched Everett toss his cheap piece of metal onto the bedside table. It bounced around and swirled before stilling on top of the table, but something inside of me felt off.

A bad sort of off.

“Take your ring off and I’ll get them stored away somewhere,” Everett said.

The way I felt about it was too much to process, so I stuffed it down as best as I could. I slid the ring off my finger and handed it to him, then he picked up his ring and went into his bathroom. I heard him rummaging around and opening drawers, and when he came back his h

ands were empty.

And for some reason, I didn’t like that.

My finger suddenly felt empty.

“Okay. Rings are taken care of. I’ll get on the phone with lawyers this afternoon to discuss what’s happened and see what we can do about starting the uncontested divorce paperwork. Until then, we should probably just act like it’s business as usual,” he said.

Why the hell did I not like this plan!? I needed sleep. Sleep, a decent meal, and a lot of coffee. My mind was obviously confused. Dehydrated. In another place altogether. I slid my hand through my hair and felt it smoothly go through. There was nothing there for my hair to get hitched on. A sparkle didn’t catch my eye. Nothing scratched against my skin.