Page 44 of First Comes Marriage

“Fine.” Baz pulled his wallet out and slapped a credit card down on the counter. The man snatched it up with an avalanche of obsequious chatter and disappeared into the back room to run the card.

“What really happened in Vegas?” Ethan asked when they were alone.

Baz pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache gathering behind his eyes. He had hardly slept last night, too busy berating himself for being an insensitive jackass who couldn’t control his hormones and too afraid to go to bed and hear Sabrina through the wall.

“Come on,” Ethan prodded. “You go to Vegas and get married, without bothering to tell any of your closest friends—or your mother—that you were even interested in someone,then you come home and it’s like you’re doing everything you can to avoid talking about this huge thing that happened in your life. And now you’re dropping a small fortune on new wedding rings to impress her family, but you didn’t want to bring the one person who actuallylikesthis kind of shit—”

“It’s not real,” Baz blurted out. “We didn’t mean to get married.”

Ethan blinked, his forehead wrinkling. “I’m sorry, how does someone get married if they don’t mean to get married?”

“We were drunk and I’m a fucking idiot, that’s how.”

“Okay,” Ethan said, drawing out the word. “Then why not get it annulled or get divorced or whatever? Why pretend?”

Baz sighed, rubbing his thumb and index finger over his eyes as though that could ease the pounding in his skull. “It’s complicated. Sabrina needs health insurance.”

Ethan’s face dropped. “She alright?”

“I don’t know,” Sebastian said helplessly, guilt and worry and frustration twisting in his gut into a tangled mess.

“Okay, forget why. How long are you intending to lie to everyone—”

“It’s not technically a lie.” Baz avoided his friend’s disapproving glare. “Wearemarried.”

“But you don’t want to be.”

Baz shot him a look. Why had he brought him again?Next time you get accidentally married, buy the damn rings yourself.

“I still don’t understand why you’re buying new rings,” Ethan continued as the salesman returned with Baz’s credit card and a slip for him to sign.

Baz signed the receipt and took his copy, tucking it into his wallet alongside his credit card. He thanked the salesman, promising to return the next afternoon to pick up the rings, and led Ethan out of the shop. This part of town had little foot traffic, the street lined with real estate and insurance offices rather than the shops and restaurants that were more commonin the center of town. The two friends walked nearly two blocks in silence before Baz finally stopped in front of his car, turning to face Ethan.

“She deserves a real ring,” Baz said, that knot behind his sternum hot and growing by the second.

“She deserves a real marriage,” Ethan countered.

“I can give her the ring.” Ethan stared at him, his gaze boring into Baz like he’d excavate that burning knot from his chest with a look alone. “Don’t say anything to Gav and Jamie, alright? They wouldn’t get it.”

“Alright.” Ethan stood back as Baz climbed into his car, but he leaned down to speak to him through the open window. “For the record, you deserve a real marriage too.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Sabrina?”

Sebastian’s voice pinged through the condo, bouncing off all the metal and hardwood until it knocked at the door to the bathroom where Sabrina stood on the bathmat, naked, massaging lotion into her legs, her wet hair twisted on top of her head in a towel.

“In here!” she called back.

Heavy footsteps drew nearer, each one coiling something hot and tight low in her belly. Sebastian was mere steps away and she was naked, her skin still damp from her shower, her hands gliding over her thighs and calves as she methodically applied the lotion. If he were to open the door, if he were to lean on it too hard—he was always leaning in doorways, as if he didn’t know how gorgeous it made him look, or maybe because he did know?—the latch on the bathroom door might give way. He might catch a glimpse of her, naked in his condo—theircondo. Her nipples tightened at the thought, the way she imagined his eyes would darken, the tick of his jaw, the heavy outline of him in those flimsy sweatpants he always slept in.

Stop. He doesn’t want you.

That’s what he’d said the night before, wasn’t it? Not in so many words, but that’s what he’d meant. And afterAunt Lucy’s warning… Definitely best to shut down any fantasy she still harbored that her fake husband might turn into her real lover.

His footsteps paused outside the bathroom door. “You almost ready to go?”

“Five minutes.”More like ten, but who’s counting?

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