I’d been dreading this for days. If I hadn’t been so certain she’d reject a marriage, I would have told her my plan beforehand like I’d assured her father I’d do. I knew that never would have worked. She would have refused, and that wasn’t an option. But as thoroughly as I’d known this moment would be a challenge, I hadn’t expected the horror on her face or the painful sting it would elicit.
Rowan looked down at her trembling hands, gaping at the Celtic ring tattooed on her finger. That would be a little harder to explain.
“What have you done?” She breathed then shot me a look rife with betrayal.
Every muscle in my body coiled to lash out. “I did what I had to do to keep you safe.”
She looked back at the ring, her head shaking in disbelief. “No. You’re lying. I would never have married you. It never happened.” Her words were a blade slicing through all but the very last thread of my control.
“Oh yeah? Then tell me how I got these?” I pulled up the camera roll on my phone and displayed an image of me with Rowan, her grinning ecstatically while holding a small bouquet of fresh flowers and displaying her new tattoo for the camera.
She jumped to her feet and snatched the phone from my hand. One by one, she scrolled through my record of the past twenty-four hours. Our arrival at the small chapel. Our kiss. Her grinning through the pain of her tattoo. Us dancing at a nightclub decked out in celebratory decorations. It had taken me a couple of days to put it all together, but the night had gone off without a hitch. Granted, she’d been high as a kite, and the paperwork was all forged, but none of that mattered. My objective had been to make sure the world knew Rowan and I were married, and now they did.
“How? How could you do this without telling me first?” She looked up, eyes glassy. “How could you?” she screamed, then threw my phone at me.
I ducked on instinct and grimaced when I heard the thing crash against the wall behind me. “I did it for exactly this reason,” I roared back at her. “I knew … you … this wouldn’t … Jesus Christ!” I roared, turning around to try to regain my composure.
It pissed me off even more that I was upset because the words seemed to get lost on their way from my head to my mouth. It had always been that way. I’d learned to manage it by keeping calm, but fuck if Rowan didn’t make me feel like a stuttering kid again.
“If you knew I wouldn’t agree, that should have been a sign not to do it.”
I turned back around and forced my words to come slow and steady. “So I’m allowed to fuck you, but I’m not good enough to stand beside you? Is that how this works?”
She flinched. “No, I…I had plans.”
“Yeah, I know your plans. Marry some panty-waste socialite who probably has a secret fetish for little boys and work for Daddy’s campaign while doing charity work on the side. Maybe have two-point-five kids and drink away your misery every night. That’s one hell of a plan.”
“You presumptive, condescending asshole. You don’t know anything.”
“Well, I know that your father agreed with me that a marriage was the best way to protect you.” That’s right, princess. Your daddy knew.
Her face went so white, I was surprised she didn’t pass out. “He knows?”
All the oxygen seemed to leak from the room.
“I told him that day I took you home when he and I talked privately. I didn’t exactly spell out how it would all go down, but he knew the goal.”
Her eyes cut to the side a split second before she bolted for the bathroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it. Had it been anyone else, I would have written off the outburst as normal. People got upset and lashed out. I would have given her some time to cool off and hoped we could discuss things rationally later.
But this was Rowan.
She didn’t do emotions like other people. My instincts were screaming at me that something was horribly wrong, but I had no idea what.
I lifted my gaze to the vaulted ceiling, breathing deeply before sitting down on the edge of the bed. I didn’t feel right leaving her, so I resigned myself to wait. I didn’t have to wait long. Minutes later, her scream and the crash of shattering glass had me shooting to my feet.
