35. Max

Somewhere Over The Rainbow was playing on repeat in my head. I wasn’t sure why, but I liked the song, so I went along with it. Someone had turned on the sound of the ocean lapping at the shore, and the soothing sounds quickly lulled me back to sleep. I was going to have to sleep like this more often. I missed the sounds of the ocean. Being in Kansas fucking sucked.

Then a very familiar scent filtered through the air. I spread my hand out until I found the warm body I was just dreaming about and pulled her against me. She moaned as she tangled her limbs with mine, snuggling into my chest. She was so fucking warm and smelled amazing. How the hell did I get so lucky?

My eyes popped open and I stared around the room.

Scratch that. We weren’t in a room. We were in a fucking hut.

I sat up in bed, dropping Christa to the mattress with a thunk. I rubbed my eyes, sure I was seeing things. Right outside the hut was the ocean. The honest to fucking God ocean. What the hell were we doing by the ocean? And how did we get here?

I shook Christa hard, needing her to wake up and answer my fucking questions. There were so many fucking questions. “Christa!”

“Stop,” she groaned. “I’m sleeping.”

“Not anymore, you’re not. Do you know where we are?”

“In bed,” she mumbled. “We shouldn’t be,” she sighed. “I told myself we were over.”

Yeah, I told myself that, too, so why were we in bed together? Why was there an ocean outside our door?

“Baby, you really need to wake up.”

“Not yet. I think I drank too much.”

“No shit, you drank too much. I did too. I don’t have my hat,” I grumbled, looking around the room. I scooted off the edge of the bed and bent over, looking on the floor. I fell over, not able to hold myself upright yet. My eyes drifted over the rug. Clothes littered the floor, but there was no sign of my hat. I needed my fucking hat.

“And a cigar,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Christa, do you remember anything about last night?”

“Hmm?” she mumbled. “Not really. Why?”

“Because there are a few things we need to discuss. Like where my hat is.”

“It’s just a hat,” she grumbled.

“It’s not a hat. It’s my hat and I need it!”

“It’s too early for this.”

I struggled to my feet, leaning over the bed. I started tapping her arm, trying to get her to wake the fuck up. “Do you hear that?”

“Mm-hmm. Pretty.”

“Yeah, pretty,” I snapped. “Maybe you could wake the fuck up so we could discuss why I have no hat. Or maybe why there’s a fucking ocean outside our hut, or—” I was about to shake her awake when I stopped and stared at my hand. “Ahh,” I said, unable to form any other words. “Or why I have a fucking ring on my finger! What the fuck is this!” I shouted.

A pillow was launched at me, hitting me in the head. It didn’t even faze me, though. How could it when there were more important things to think about, like where the fuck my hat was or why there was a band on my finger when it was usually empty?

I grabbed her left hand, twisting it in the air as I squinted just to be sure I was seeing this correctly. My left hand was next to hers. She had a band. I had a band. We were near an ocean.

And the room was fucking spinning.

“Christa,” I pleaded, “I really need…” Air refused to gather in my lungs. The room spun as I struggled to do the simplest thing in the world. Breathing was second nature, wasn’t it? You didn’t tell your body to do it. It just happened. So why the fuck couldn’t I breathe? And where the fuck was my hat?

“Oh my God, Max,” Christa finally said, though her tone was more irritated than shocked. “It’s just a fucking hat! Forget about it and?—”

She went silent, and I could only imagine that was because she finally pulled her fucking head off the mattress and looked around her.

“Max…where are we?”

I shook my head, finally looking up at her. I didn’t have the words, so I held up my left hand with wide eyes and pointed at her. “Bag!”

She quickly looked around the room, but shook her head. “What? We don’t have a bag!”

“Ring,” I gasped. “You…me…” My eyes widened even further and I pointed at my barely-breathing self, “Bag!”

She stared at me, then dropped her gaze to her hand. Reality set in as she shook her head, gaping at the ring on her finger. “We’re…and we’re…” Her eyes swept our surroundings, taking it all in. “No. No, this can’t be right,” she said, stumbling from the bed. Her foot caught in the blankets, and if I weren’t panicking, I would have tried to catch her, but as it was, there was no room in my brain for helping anyone other than me.

“Bag!” I shouted. What did it take to get a fucking bag around here to breathe into?

Christa groaned, rolling over as she held her eye. I was on all fours, crawling toward the door of the hut, praying someone was out there and would explain this to me. “Bag!” I shouted just before I collapsed. I laid down, staring up at the blue sky as the ocean breeze washed over me. It was…calming, but so wrong. This wasn’t the way I was supposed to get back to island time. I was fucking married? I didn’t even remember last night or where I was.

Scottie’s face appeared over me. He grinned down, wearing what looked suspiciously like my hat. But it wasn’t. His was trimmed with a blue ribbon.

“My hat,” I pushed past the wheezing in my lungs.

He took a sip of something through a straw and bent down, cocking his head at me. “This is not building a fire, but I applaud your efforts. You got the girl.”

I held up my hand, pointing at my finger. “Ring…hat…gone.”

He nodded. “Yep, you’re married. Congrats! We’re all so proud of you!”

“We?”

He grabbed my arm and hauled me upright. I took a gasping breath, finally feeling the pressure in my lungs ease just a little.

“Yeah, when you called, we came running. What’s a wedding without a little fun in the sun?”

“We?” I continued to stare at him.

“Well, the crew. Your team, obviously. I mean, a lot of other people wanted to come, but they couldn’t make it. Some people were working. And I’m only here because someone had to fly the plane.”

“Plane?” I questioned. When the fuck did I get on a plane?

I looked back into the hut and stared at my wife.

My wife?

“I’m married?” I asked.

“Man, it was beautiful. I got the whole thing on camera, and don’t worry. There are plenty of pictures.”

“But…”

I stared down at my finger again. “I can’t be married.” Then I looked up at him. “Where’s my hat?”

He tossed his head back and laughed. “Funny you should mention that?—”

“Why does everything hurt so bad?” Christa moaned. “My face!”

She stumbled to her feet and gasped when she realized she was in some kind of white sheath. “What am I wearing?”

“Your wedding dress,” Scottie grinned.

Her face paled as her eyes darted to mine. “I wore this to a wedding?”

“Not just any wedding,” Scottie corrected. “Your wedding.”

“My wedding?” she repeated.

“Yes, your wedding.”

“No, I didn’t get married. I…I was…” Her brows furrowed as she tried to think back.

“Yep, right there with you. Do you remember anything?”

She shook her head slightly. “I…”

“Yeah, you two were pretty wasted last night,” Scottie chuckled. “It was fucking hilarious.”

I glared at him. “If we were so wasted, why did you let us get married?”

He shrugged. “Ask Cash. I think he’s over at the tiki bar, putting in his request for karaoke. Oh, you should see Fox. He’s got the funniest?—”

“I don’t give a shit about Fox!” I snapped. “Do you see this?” I shouted, pointing at my finger. “I’m married!”

“Dude, I know. I was there. It was a beautiful ceremony.”

“Oh God,” Christa groaned. “Please tell me my family isn’t here.”

“They’re not,” Scottie reassured her. “We asked, but they couldn’t make it at such short notice.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Christa muttered.

“No time for that. We have the wedding brunch. That’s why I came to find you.”

“Wedding…” I muttered, staring off into the distance.

“Man, you sure are one lucky man,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder.

I nearly fell forward, but barely held myself up. “Where…where are we?”

“Hawaii, my friend. Hey, congrats, you two. Now, get dressed and meet us at the bar. Let’s kick this celebration off the right way!”

I flopped back on my back, staring up at the sky. “I really need my hat.”

“I don’t understand,”Christa said as we walked out of the hut. “Who would they let us get married like that? Isn’t that illegal or something? Don’t they have to stop you if you’re drunk?”

“I don’t think that’s a thing,” I muttered, slipping my sunglasses on my face. Fuck, the sun was bright.

“I mean, why would your company go along with this? We are the last two people on this earth who should get married. Can’t they see that?”

I slid a glance her way. “First off, ouch. Way to hurt my feelings.”

She scowled at me. “I didn’t hurt your feelings. You don’t even have any, you big brute! How could you let this happen?”

I chuckled at the ridiculousness of her question. “Me? What about you? Aren’t you supposed to be the level-headed one of the two of us?”

“Oh, so it’s all on me?” she asked, trudging through the sand. “You’re the one who functions with alcohol! This is on you!”

“Alright, it’s on both of us. Fuck, where the hell is my hat?”

“Yeah, that’s what you need to worry about. We just got married on a fucking island. I didn’t even have my family here! Do you know what this fucking means? And you’re worried about your fucking hat?”

She was screaming at me, losing her mind, and swearing like a sailor. She never swore. I grabbed her by the arms and shook her slightly, trying to get her to snap out of it. “It’ll be okay, alright? I’m sorry. I just…I think better when I have my hat. Plus, it blocks out the sun. It’s really not good to?—”

I stopped talking when she stared at me like I was insane.

“Right, priorities. Look, we’ll figure this out. I’m sure there’s some way to get an annulment or something. It’ll be like it never happened. We just have to hold it together.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I’m so lost. I…what have I done?”

“You married me,” I grinned, though I felt like puking. “It can’t be that bad, right?”

She nodded slightly, but the tears in her eyes made me feel like absolute shit. “Okay, we’ll just go to this brunch thingy and…and figure out a way to make this all disappear.”

“Right,” I nodded. I rubbed my chest. Why did it pang a little when she said that? Did she want to hide me from the world? Or maybe just her family. I wasn’t what they wanted for their little girl, and I knew it. Hell, I didn’t want to be married either. I liked my life the way it was. No cares, no worries. Just free to drink and fuck whoever I wanted.

Again, my chest ached when I thought of fucking anyone other than her. It had to be the fresh air. I was used to Kansas now, all that cow manure and tornados. Yeah, I had been away from the ocean too long, and it was making me lightheaded. Once I adjusted to life here, everything would be fine.

Life here.

But I wasn’t staying here, was I? And she wasn’t staying with me. She would go home, away from the ocean and the freedom living like this provided. And then what would happen? Would we get the annulment and forget each other existed? I didn’t want that. I wasn’t ready to be married, but I was in too deep with her, even if I wasn’t sure what that meant right now.

“Max,” she said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

She walked ahead of me and I stared at her, walking away in the white sheath she wore over her little white bikini. She was adorably sexy, and totally not mine. I knew that now. She didn’t want this. She was freaking out over her family not being here. Her father was a minister, for fuck’s sake. I was the last person who belonged anywhere near her. The church would probably burn to the ground if I ever stepped foot in it again.

I shoved that to the back of my mind as I shuffled through the sand to catch up to her. When we approached the bar, she grasped my hand, squeezing it tight. Fox, FNG, Dash, and Scottie were all there, along with who I assumed were their significant others. And then there was Cash, drinking a beer as he smiled at his wife. That fucker.

“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to her. I stalked through the sand, over to my boss. Tapping him on the shoulder, my anger smoldered as he grinned at me.

“Hey, it’s the groom!”

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

He grabbed my arm and dragged me further away from the bar. “I was thinking that you needed to get your head out of your ass, and this was the perfect way to do it.”

My face tightened in anger. “Fuck with me all you want, but you dragged an innocent woman into your schemes. She didn’t deserve this.”

“She was perfectly willing when she boarded that plane.”

“And probably drunk out of her mind. How could you do that?”

His growing smirk grated on my nerves. “Don’t look now, Max, but you seem like you actually care about her.”

I tore my sunglasses from my face, staring into his laughing eyes. “I may not be a great guy, but I would never do something so shitty to someone like her. She’s…nice and…”

“Innocent?” he asked. “Yeah, I got that from you. I also heard you profess your love to her,” he said, lowering his voice. “I can’t imagine you would do that if you didn’t actually feel something in that callous heart of yours.”

“You boarded a plane with two drunk people and knowingly got us hitched!”

“And your point is?” he asked, taking a drink of his beer. Then he slapped me on the arm. “Hey, this is your wedding breakfast. Try to relax a little.”

He walked past me, calling out to Eva as he returned to the bar. And that’s when I saw red. That fucker.

I stalked back over to the bar and walked straight up to Fox, yanking my hat off his head. “This is my hat. You don’t ever touch my hat.”

“Hey, groomie!” Fox grinned at me. “And it has the familiar sounds of roomie, don’t you think? Which is just so awesome since we’re going to be working on the same team. Get it? It’s like we’re roomies?”

His bright smile was way too fucking much for this time of the morning. I wasn’t sure I could deal with any of them, but Fox was by far the worst.

“I’m not working on a team with you,” I said, shoving my hat on my head. “I need a drink!” I shouted, slamming my fist on the counter.

Fox squeezed my shoulder, keeping his voice low. “Maybe you should hold back on the drinks. After all, your wife is probably waiting for you to make a speech.”

“A speech?” I scoffed. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. This was all a mistake. She doesn’t want to be married to me.”

“And you?”

“And me, what?” I snapped.

“Do you want to be married to her?”

I followed his gaze to my new wife and sighed internally. I wasn’t sure I was ready for the commitment of marriage, let alone a few dates, but I didn’t like the idea of letting her go either. Even now, when she was fighting a hangover and sipping her mimosa with people she didn’t know, she never looked more beautiful and relaxed. I watched the sunlight play across her hair and the way her face lit up when she laughed.

She was way too fucking good for a guy like me. Anyone could see it. Hell, all of these guys knew it, which was why it grated on me that they used her to get to me. She wasn’t a pawn in some game. She deserved better than a drunk wedding on an island.

I grabbed the drink out of Fox’s hand and slammed it back. “You never should have allowed us to get married.”

“One of these days, you’ll see how much the love of a good woman like that can turn your life around. And not because you need to change, but because you want to change to be good enough for someone like her,” he pointed at Christa. “You have it all backward. She’s the island, and you’re the man hoping he can stay in paradise.”