Chapter 1: Monica
“Where the hell am I?” My eyes slowly opened and the pounding in my head intensified to the point I could barely see—it even felt like my eyeballs were vibrating.
The sheets wrapped around me were the only thing I was wearing. They felt good against my naked body, but I couldn’t even get my eyes opened wide enough to see what color they were. I blinked several times, just trying to bring the world into focus, but my head was hurting so bad it felt like someone was steadily bringing a hammer down against my skull each time my heart beat against my chest. I lifted up on my elbows and rolled over to see an empty bed beside me. My abdomen hurt, and my knees felt like they had been dragged across something rough—it almost felt like carpet burn. I finally managed to get my eyes to focus and I pushed myself over to the side of the bed, so my feet could hit the floor. I pulled the sheets away and saw that that my knees reflected exactly what I felt. They were red and scrubbed, with a couple of marks that definitely looked like they had unceremoniously slid across the carpet. As my eyes focused even more, I could only assume that the rug near the doorway was the culprit. The only thing that I couldn’t wrap my mind around was why or how I got there. I rubbed my throbbing eyes and saw a champagne bottle on the floor.
Okay, well—I guess my good Christian fiancé couldn’t wait until the wedding after all?
My ears finally began to comprehend something besides my heartbeat, and I could hear a shower echoing. My eyes shifted towards the direction of the noise and I saw steam pouring out of what appeared to be the bathroom. A smile slowly formed on my face, even with cloudy vision and a complete blackout of my memories from the night before. It seemed that my fiancé had finally decided to take my virginity—I did kind of regret that I couldn’t remember it. Dane was a total Bible thumper, and had been incredibly persistent with his decision to remain celibate until our wedding night. After several months of nothing more than a kiss goodnight, I had gotten used to his quirky conservativeness. He certainly wouldn’t have found any hesitation on my end if he wanted it, and by the look of the discarded clothes on the floor next to the champagne bottle, it looked like he had finally changed his mind. I tried to stand, but my head felt like a sack of bricks on my shoulders. I decided to lay back on the bed and wait until some of the pounding stopped. My hand clasped on the front of my skull and I felt something foreign on my finger.
Holy shit! Is that a wedding band? Oh my god! We got married? We eloped? We freaking eloped!
Next to the modest solitaire diamond engagement ring Dane had put on my finger, was a solid gold band that nestled against it. The smile on my face got bigger, fighting against the agonizing pounding in my head, but even that couldn’t stop the excitement from flowing through my veins. I had been nervous about the wedding, nervous that something would screw it up before we got down the aisle, but it seemed that all of that worry would be an afterthought. Dane didn’t compromise his faith in order to get into my panties—he married me. I looked towards the steam when I heard the shower go silent. The door opened further and I could already imagine the look on his face when he had to explain how the hell we ended up in a motel room—and married. Even with my joy overwhelming me and the weight of the world off my shoulders, I still intended to tease him. I saw his outline against the steam and leaned forward.
“You just couldn’t wait, could you—you had to have a piece of this.” I motioned to my body and ran my hand down my stomach until it was resting on my pelvis.
“You were nothing special.” The voice didn’t belong to my fiancé—the steam started to fade and instead of the man I was engaged to, I saw his brother Grady emerging from the bathroom.
“Grady? What the fuck?” I grabbed the sheets and quickly bunched them up around me.
“Is that any way to speak to your husband?” He walked through the remainder of the steam with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“My husband?” My eyes fixated on the wedding band. “No! How the hell did this happen? I can’t marry you! I’m engaged to your brother!”
“You sure as fuck weren’t thinking about my brother when you said your vows.” He chuckled and leaned over to pick up his jeans from the floor. “It’s all over social media—check it out.”
“What?” I looked around the room.
The pounding in my head was replaced with panic. I found my phone next to the nightstand and it didn’t have much battery left, but when I clicked on my social media accounts, I saw all that I needed to see. There were photographs of me with Grady, the two of us standing in front of an Elvis impersonator as we traded rings, and lots of shocked reactions. I couldn’t remember anything from the night before, and the pictures only made it more confusing. I didn’t like Grady. I was engaged to Dane. Dane was supposed to be my future—he was my ticket to fix everything wrong in my life. Not only was he the top quarterback in college football, he was predicted to be a first round pick in the upcoming NFL draft. My heart sank into my stomach as I scrolled through the pictures. It was like watching a horror movie where I had the starring role, but none of it was familiar at all. Grady returned from the bathroom again with his jeans on and picked up his t-shirt. He slid it over his head and down his torso, covering the ink on his chest.
“What’s wrong?” He smirked. “You don’t like what you see?”
“How did this happen?” I put my hand on my head again. “We can’t be married! This has to be some kind of cruel trick!”
“It isn’t a trick. You’re my wife.” He took a seat in a chair and started pushing his feet into his boots.
“You took advantage of me! I had to be drunk!” I felt tears welling up in my eyes as the weight of what happened started to resonate within me.
“I didn’t take advantage of you.” He shook his head. “You are the one that tried to take advantage of me. I had to fight you off. Don’t worry, I didn’t fuck you. It was tempting, but you were already passed out by the ti
me I got you on the bed.”
“Then why the hell am I so sore?” I pulled the sheets up enough to reveal my knees. “And how do you explain that?”
“Like I said—I had to fight you off.” He stood after his boots were on his feet.
“Even if I was so drunk that I lost my freaking mind, why would you ever do this? We’ve never even been out on a date. Why didn’t you just take me home?” The tears that were welling up in my eyes started to roll down my cheeks.
“I heard what you said the other night about my brother and why you wanted to marry him.” His face started to get a little darker as he narrowed his eyes. “You wanted to lock him down before he signed his contract with the NFL—you didn’t give a shit about him.”
“You don’t understand.” My eyes opened wide and the tears started to roll down my cheeks faster. “I have to marry your brother.”
“That ain’t an option now. He might not have listened to me before last night, but now that he’s seen what a little slut you are, he’ll never even consider marrying you.” His dark expression remained focused on me.
“You ruined everything.” I rubbed my fingers against my cheek and wiped away the tears.
“No.” He chuckled and shook his head and started to stand. “I fixed everything—everything that you tried to ruin. The room is paid for until noon. After that you need to get the fuck out.”
“Where are you going? Are you just going to leave me here?” I looked around the room and saw a clock that indicated I had two hours left before I had to go.
“Yep.” He nodded and walked towards the girl. “You made your bed—now you to get to fucking lie in it.”
The door slammed and Grady was gone. I started crying again, pulling the sheets against my chest and over my face. I hated Grady for what he had done, but as my sorrow consumed me, I started to wonder if I could repair my relationship with Dane. I typed out a long text message, apologizing, and telling him that I had no idea what happened the previous night. I stared at the phone for nearly ten minutes, but there was no response from Dane. I knew he was up. He never slept past seven and he usually worked out in the morning hours, even on the weekend. His phone was never more than a few feet from him and he never ignored a call or a text message.
When I didn’t get a response to my message, I called him, but it went to voicemail. I called a few more times before leaving a sobbing message begging him to talk to me. I could explain everything—at least the parts I remembered. The last memory I had before things went black was talking to Grady at his mother’s house. Dane was upstairs talking to a scout for one of the teams he wanted to sign with. How I went from talking to Grady in the living room to being married to him in a hotel room was a memory I couldn’t even begin to remember.
Please talk to me, Dane. Please don’t believe what you saw.
I loaded my social media accounts back up and used what little power that was left in my cell phone to start deleting all of the photos I had apparently uploaded the night before. Some of the comments made me sick. It was nothing but judgment and shock with everyone even more baffled than I was about how I ended up married to Dane’s brother. The pictures of the wedding were worst. I appeared to be happy, but as soon as the vows were said, he simply led me away from the altar without even lifting my veil. I got the pounding in my head under control enough to get out of bed and slide back into my wedding dress. It was dirty and torn in several places, but it was all I had to wear. I didn’t even know where the clothes I had been wearing the previous night ended up.
I closed my eyes to block out the light once I was out of the hotel room and waiting for the elevator. Dane’s silence was enough for me to know that everything had been ruined and my chances of marrying him were over. Even if he did forgive me for marrying his brother, Grady knew what my plan was—there was no way Dane would trust me again after that was exposed.
Why the hell can’t I remember anything?
The man at the front desk looked at me with a little bit of concern, but he let me use his phone so I could get a taxi. Normally, I would have taken an Uber, but my phone was completely out of juice after I spent time trying to erase the evidence of my unholy union with Grady. The light outside the hotel hurt worse than what I had seen coming through the windows, so I dug around in my purse until I found my sunglasses. They were scratched and broken, but it was better than nothing. I slid them on my face and waited for my ride to appear.
Once it did, I crawled into the back of the taxi and gave the driver enough money to take me home. Everything was so screwed up in my head that I couldn’t even begin to put the pieces together. Every bump the taxi hit made my body hurt and my stomach roar with disappointment. I had never been blackout drunk before. I hadn’t even drank more than a glass of champagne in months. The worst night prior to the previous one was spent with me curled around a toilet, but I remembered every moment of the ordeal. The taxi pulled up in front of my house and I did the walk of shame to my front door. The instant I opened it, I saw my father stand up in his chair, looking at me with concern.
“Daddy...” I walked across the room and wrapped my arms around him. “I fucked up really bad.”
Chapter 2: Grady