I go to scrub a hand over my face, and the titanium of my wedding band hits me squarely on the brow bone. Talk about being smacked in the face with the cold, hard truth of yesterday.

I’m married.

Fucking married.

Last night flickers through my mind like a slideshow of someone else’s life. Someone else’s perhaps, yet . . . every moment of it was lived.

“Dance with me,” Hendrix shouts above the bruising tempo of the music.

I rise from my seat in the darkened corner of our VIP pod and adjust my hat lower over my face. On any other day, it’s okay for Gizmo from BENT to be seen partying in Las Vegas. Just not tonight and not with a woman who has a sixty-thousand-dollar wedding ring on her finger.

People can look back in a week and realize the guy who looked familiar but who they couldn’t place really was me, really was here, and really was with his wife, but the plan is for them to remember I looked like I was hiding. That I was trying to have a private moment.

But those thoughts, the careful planning, dissipate as I step up and slide my hand around Hendrix’s waist. With my front to her back, I pull her against me so that my lips brush against the shell of her ear when I speak. “I don’t dance, Cookie.”

She spins around, her lips pink and her eyes alive as she hops up and down to the beat. I try to ignore the jostle of her breasts or how they rub against me as she does. The enticing sight of her body moving in tune with the beat. She smirks and then leans in close to me. “And I don’t get married, Jase.” She then throws her head back and whoops. “Now, dance.”

Then there was the two-a.m. snack run that had us sitting cross-legged on the cement of the hotel balcony with two spoons and a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream between us.

“How many other people in this city do you think are celebrating getting married tonight?” she asks around a bite of ice cream while wielding her spoon like a conductor when she talks.

“A lot. A little. I don’t think all of them are celebrating though.” I take a swig of my beer. It doesn’t pair well with the mint but fuck if I care at this point.

“That’s depressing.” She’s buzzed and the little grunt she makes as she tries to dig another spoonful of ice cream out of the container is adorable.

“But true. Accidental pregnancies. An escape from something worse. I—”

“Oh my God.” Her eyes widen and the alcohol makes her every expression animated.