Page 28 of Clinically Bewitched
“Did you get married? Please tell me you got married. That would make this perfect.”
“I don’t know!” I practically shouted, then immediately lowered my voice, terrified of waking her. “I don’t remember! That’s the problem!”
More laughter. “Oh man. Ohman. This is incredible. Wait until I tell the others.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Gabriel’s going to lose his mind. Quinton will probably throw a party. Hayden will give you that look—you know the one, where he’s disappointed but also secretly impressed.”
“Fitz, I’m begging you.”
“Okay, okay.” He was still chuckling. “What do you need? Besides a time machine and a new identity?”
I looked at the woman in my bed, still asleep. Thank God, because I felt panic rising in my chest like a tidal wave. “I need you to tell me this is fixable,” I hissed. “I need you to tell me this isn’t as bad as it seems.”
There was a long pause.
Then Fitz said, very gently, “Buddy, I think you need to check your left hand.”
“What? Why would I…?”
And then I saw it.
A ring.
A gold band on my left ring finger.
I stared at it, my brain refusing to process what I was seeing.
“Fitz,” I whispered. “Fitz, I think I got married.”
The laughter started again, louder this time.
“Welcome to Vegas, Julien. Welcome to Vegas.”
Chapter Eight
Julien
I hung up on Fitz.
Or maybe he hung up on me. It was hard to tell over the sound of his hysterical laughter and the roaring in my ears that suggested my cardiovascular system was staging a full-scale rebellion.
I stared at the ring.
It stared back at me, gleaming mockingly in the early morning light filtering through the hotel curtains.
Gold. Simple. Definitely real.
Definitely on my finger.
How?
How? How? How? How? How?
My chest tightened. Not the pleasant tightness of a good workout or the satisfying compression of a well-fitted suit. This was the kind of tightness that suggested my ribcage had decided to become a trash compactor and my lungs were the unfortunate garbage.
I tried to take a deep breath.
