Page 2 of One Vow

“Of course, she does. She’s too pathetic to go anywhere else.” She yanked a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “She even lives in the same freaking house. And you need to go talk to her. Use that Makenzie charm and get her to divorce you.”

She stamped her foot, a petulant move in my book, but it was Beth, so it wasn’t beyond her. “Right now! Because so help me God, if I don’t get this promotion, I’m taking you and her and everyone involved with these videos down. And it’s a #MeToo world, Finn. You know what’ll happen. Do you hear me?”

Pardon me if I wasn’t exactly cartwheeling my way to the church to be married to this one. “I hear you.”

Half the damned hospital heard her.

She leaned in close enough that I got a nose full of her perfume. It reminded me of crazy with a smidgeon of bitchy afternotes. My future was that smell, and I almost groaned in misery out loud, but snapped my mouth shut to hold it back.

“Make this happen, Finn.” She turned and walked to the door, and I stared because there was nothing else I could do. “I’ll book you a flight.”

Not only would she book my flight, I wouldn’t even have to worry about packing, arranging a ride to the airport, or telling whoever needed to know I would be gone for a couple days. When something mattered to Beth Cooper, it really mattered to Beth Cooper. And she would do whatever it took to make sure I was divorced by a week from Saturday because that was the kind of thing she did.

But what she didn’t do was love anyone other than herself. And as much as I wanted to save everything I’d worked for, I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life, or even one minute of it, tied to someone so angry and so vicious. Not when I knew what it was like to be married to a woman I loved with all my heart. But I also knew I didn’t have a choice.

One Decade Ago

From the moment I discovered football, Sunday was always my favorite day. That came to have even more meaning when I started to play for the university’s football team. Sunday was the day after the game, when we were all still heroes even if we lost. A day when we didn’t have classes and could just relax. We’d watch NFL games all day long with beers and bets on the side.

This particular Sunday was wasted on me because I felt as if I had a hangover, my knee was in a splint, and my bedroom was dark. This Sunday, I wasn’t a hero. I was a casualty. Tackled on fourth and goal at the one-yard line, leg bent awkward, pinned under a guy from Oklahoma who weighed in at a proud 220, all of which landed on my right leg. Hence the druggy hangover, splint, and darkness.

Monday wasn’t much better, but by Tuesday I was fed up with Vicodin and decided not to watch the live stream of my classes today, a luxury afforded to athletes and distance learners. Today, I was going to grace my teachers with my presence. On crutches. I limped across the campus from the Alpha Alpha Phi fraternity house where I lived. Not my finest hour. And the next one was worse. I hobbled into class, drenched in sweat, arms aching, knee throbbing, head ready to explode.

All this effort for Anatomy and Physiology. For a class that I could have probably passed in my sleep thanks to a photographic memory and a two-hour-a-day pre-party study time schedule, because Alpha Alpha Phi was a party frat and we partied every night.

I took the first empty seat I found and sat down. I propped my crutches on the wall beside me and wished that before I set off on my hour-long trek to class, I’d remembered my backpack with my notebook and pens.

Optimistic me thought listening might work, but the me who knew my devil that didn’t give a fuck attitude was fully aware that listening without reading would never work for me. Of course, I could always just sit here for an hour and wish I wasn’t thinking about my notebook and pen because a photographic memory only worked on things I could see, not what I’d heard.

The room was huge with raised seating and long curved tables broken into three sections and divided by steps leading to each tier. In front, there was a single desk and a whiteboard that ran the length of the wall. Nothing about this room was extraordinary. Nothing memorable. It was a classroom like a hundred others on campus. But it was magical. And it started with…

“Hey.” The voice. Then the smile. Then the eyes. She didn’t appeal to me all at once, but in waves. And it started with her voice.

“Hi,” I answered while I studied her.

She wrangled her bag over my head, well, almost over except the corner that caught me in the temple.

“Sorry.” She slid into the seat next to me. From the thousand pound bag that whacked me in the head, she pulled a legal pad, three pens, two high lighters, an anatomy book that accounted for the girth and weight of her bag, a twin to the one I’d left at home, and a tape recorder she set on the corner of her desk.

When she turned and flashed me another smile, I almost fell out of the chair. It was a holy shit moment, the kind a guy like me would never be lucky enough to have twice. The kind that imprinted on my guts. God, she was extraordinary in ways I didn’t usually find women to be.

“No problem.” And I sounded like I’d just rounded the corner from junior high to puberty. A crack that made prob and lem sound as if two different people, one an adult male and the other much younger, on the cusp of chest hair and pubes, said it.

She stared at me for a second, and my fool heart fell for her, right then. For her eyes. Blue like a summer sky. Big enough I could see, if not forever, a very long time. I fell hard enough I wasn’t even bothered by the floweriness of my thoughts.

“If you hear me actually burst into tears during class, don’t worry. I suck at science.” She said, and her voice was music to ears that finally knew what real music was.

One more smile out of her and I was probably going to end up making a fool of myself. She was that kind of dangerous to my well-being and my cool-guy reputation. The long dark hair that curtained her face as she settled in drew my gaze and I wondered if the dark brown strands were as silky as they looked.

Before I could answer, Dr. Klein walked in, white lab coat, ruler-straight spine, wiry gray hair that sprouted from her head in about seventy directions. If she wasn’t Albert Einstein’s time-traveling twin, she was definitely his modern-day doppelganger. She even had the mustache.

The wonder girl next to me leaned over.

“I’m Felicity, by the way.” She held out her hand. “Felicity Fields.”

“Chancellor Fields’ daughter?” I asked, my voice a croak again.

She nodded. And if her smile was potent, her skin was silk. Satin. Perfect. Extraordinary. “I’m…um, I’m Finn.”