“Gah, shut up.” I covered my mouth and groaned, fighting wave after wave of nausea. “We did not do drugs. I graduated from DARE. I know how to make safe and responsible choices.”

He snorted. “Then why don’t you?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched my nose. “Please stop talking.”

He shifted on the bed. “Oh, fuck, are you gonna hurl?”

I went into Lamaze breathing and rapidly fanned my face. “Don’t talk about it.” My brow pinched.

“Do not exercise that demon, Meyers!”

“Gah! Go fuck a bag of glass, Barrett! Your commentary is only making matters worse.”

“You puke on me and I’m done. I’ll fucking lose it.”

I dropped into a crouch and breathed out a hard exhalation.

This was my Karmageddon, my punishment for a lifetime of foolish choices, set to destroy whatever happiness I’d accidentally found.

A sneeze built in my sinuses the longer I fanned my face, but it was the only thing helping. The tickle traveled through my nose and throat. There was a fifty-fifty shot I would either sneeze away the nasties or hurl. I braced for complete annihilation. “Oh, God.”

“Don’t puke! Fight it!” Barrett scrambled to the farthest end of the bed.

I breathed faster, fanning my face and—“Ah chh!” I pinched my nose, which caused a full-body backup, sort of like a keg of dynamite exploding underwater. The rest of the sneeze needed to evacuate and escaped in a simultaneous fart.

“Dude…” Barrett blinked at me in a mixture of horror and awe. “I think your body just took a screenshot.”

I garbled out a moan and rolled onto my side. Whatever that was, it hurt. “My body is rejecting me. I think I’m dying.”

“I gotta say, I’ve never witnessed a woman do anything like that. It looked like a reverse orgasm. Did it hurt?”

“Yes, it fucking hurt.” I groaned and flung a pillow at his face. “We don’t have time for this! Pack up your broken balls and get out!” I needed to clean myself up. Hale would be there any second.

“Face it Meyers, he’s gonna hear about this.”

“You know how insanely territorial your brother gets. Please.”

“Checkout’s not for—Oh, shit, it’s later than I thought.”

“Damn it, Barrett! I need you to work with me here!” I was on the struggle bus, next stop Cry Town. My panic bubbled up in the form of tears as I tried to collect myself. “I just… You can’t… There’s…pizza sauce in my toes… My head… The wedding…I want…”

“All right, all right.” He held up his hands in fearful surrender as my jaw wildly trembled. “Don’t you dare cry, Meyers.”

For months, I feared this moment would come. The moment I fucked up my entire future to the point of no return. I didn’t know how or when it would inevitably happen, but I always sensed a disastrous end looming.

Waking up next to my fiancé’s naked brother in a hotel room two days before our wedding seemed the kill shot that would put my happiness out to pasture once and for all.

“Relax. We’ll just tell Hale nothing happened. He’ll have his usual hissy fit, and then everything will?—”

“Get off the bed!” Losing my patience, I shoved him off the mattress. “I’m not ruining my future over one blackout night of whatever the hell this was!”

He clambered to the floor in a heap of muscle and flesh, landing like a pile of broken mannequin parts. “What the hell, Meyers? When did you get so freakishly strong?”

Probably about the same time my future husband warned me of his impending arrival. Barrett shoved to his feet.

I tossed the balled-up sheet at him. “Cover yourself!”

“Stop throwing stuff at me!” He turned toward the bathroom, exposing his bare ass.