Page 1 of Obey

Chapter One

TALIA

We all know how it goes.

When the tall, dark, built like a brick house man gets on the plane to Chicago and there’s an empty, extra leg-room seat next to the bright-haired, bubbly pixie, they’re destined to fall in love and get married.

I’m heading to Chi-town for the weekend before I head home to Kentucky, dragging my heels a bit because I’m not ready to face what’s waiting for me.

So, when the giant brooding bastard—who looks like he should be a bronze statue in a museum—boards my plane and has to hunch his shoulders to make himself small to fit in the cabin, I’m already picking out my dress and cancelling my connecting flight.

Tipping my head back, I thank past Talia for splurging for the extra legroom. Though I kinda wish she’d have made me keep my waxing appointment. Can’t sit next to the man of my dreams with prickly legs, and I certainly can’t join the mile high club with an unruly bush.

My body heats as he approaches. It’s not something I’d have thought about before. But today, I’m not the Talia of old. I can be whoever I want to be.

And right now, I want to be a new-and-improved Talia who thinks words like “bastard” —even if it makes my whole body cringe—and who thinks about doing naughty things with strangers on a plane.

Though I do a quick shirt-check to make sure I don’t have BBQ sauce from my lunch smeared down my chest.

All clear.

I have my bestest, peopliest smile ready to go. There’s no way this cantankerous hulk of a man will be able to resist me. This is it, the moment I meet the man of my dreams. Harry-the-cheater will be nothing but a blip on my rearview mirror once this man starts talking to me and falls head-over-heels for the tiny bundle of joy from Louisville. There’s snow coming down out the window. The setting is perfect. I’m ready.

Sucking in a breath, I prepare my greeting, but the giant keeps walking.

Huh? Maybe he doesn’t like my brightly colored hair after all.

Don’t be so silly, Tali, that’s not what it is. There’s assigned seating on this flight, so he isn’t fated to sit next to me. It’s nothing personal. It’s not at all that he doesn’t like my new do.

Though in truth, I’m not really sure I like it yet myself.

It’s a new thing. As in, freshly done this morning. When my formerly honey-blonde, waist length locks tumbled onto the floor of the hairdresser’s as she worked her magic giving me an undercut and colored it teal, I admit, I questioned my sanity.

But, having just found out my fiancé, my high school sweetheart, the boy I lost my virginity to, had grown up into a lying cheating scumbag... Well, it’s not Weird Barbie by any means, but let’s just say it wasn’t a carefully calculated haircut.

I’m not generally impulsive, so as I reach a tentative hand to the underside of what remains of my hair, I shudder at the fuzzy feeling that meets my fingertips. Thankfully, she shaved it into afunky ‘V,’ so when my hair is tied into a ponytail, it doesn’t look too weird.

I smother a giggle. My parents are going to absolutely poop their pants when they see it. Their rule abiding, Sunday school attending, straight A-student girl has never as much as colored outside the lines. And now she has a bright blue-green, Mohawk thing. I’m feeling Scarlett Johannsson right now. I imagine when I look in the mirror, though, it’ll be quick to correct me.

This is... oh fudge. This is bad. This is really, really bad.

A tightness blooms in my chest, and my breath stutters as it tries to fill my lungs. Maybe he didn’t mean to cheat? Maybe he tripped over something and his... his... boy thing accidentally slipped into her?

A low rumble rattles inside me as I try to rationalize his infidelity. Aside from the first time, the fateful time when I lost my V-card to him in high school, we haven’t done it again since. “It’s just as well considering he’s a slimy snake.”

When our parents sat us down and told us our act of sin, our “crime against God” had earned us an eternity together, I almost laughed. But they were deadly serious.

Then, after returning from our “True Love Waits” church camp weekend, they insisted our punishment, our penance to our maker, should be no more s-e-x before marriage. And my “beloved” fiancé nodded like one of those bobble head toys you can get.

He just agreed. Ha! I guess he agreed to their faces. Because from how acquainted he seemed with a woman I’ve never seen before, in what was supposed to become our marital home once I graduated college and moved home to Kentucky, it wasn’t their first time.

Oh geez, maybe itwastheir first time, and he’s a little...deviant.

My face and chest are hot and undoubtedly turning a dark shade of red as the scandalous memory replays in my mind.

I’m not completely clueless. I have a growing collection of spicy books on my Kindle app that I read when I’m alone. I wanted to try to learn how to do things, and anticipate my future husband’s needs in the bedroom. I even made a bucket list of things we could try together once we’re married that’s tucked inside my journal.

Turns out, he was already trying them with someone else behind my back.

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