CHAPTER 1
COLLETTA
Iwake up with what feels like a colony of fire ants doing synchronized swimming in my skull.
The light piercing my curtains is a personal attack. I roll over, groaning, and my hand hits something crisp on the nightstand. Paper. My fingers fumble across expensive cardstock, the kind with embossed lettering that screamsprofessional.
I force one eye open, then immediately regret the decision as the morning light lances straight through my pupil like a laser beam designed specifically to punish bad life choices.
There are words on the paper. Big ones. Professional ones. The kind that belong on documents signed by people who have their lives together.
PROTECTION SERVICES: WEDDING PACKAGE
The letters refuse to cooperate with my hungover brain, sliding around like they're doing the cha-cha across the expensive cardstock. I squeeze my eyes shut, then open both of them, blinking rapidly in that way that probably makes me look like I'm having some medical episode. Once. Twice. Three times.
The words finally stop their drunken swimming routine and hold still long enough for me to read them properly.
My stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with the tequila.
Below the header, there's a signature. Mine. The loops in my name are too enthusiastic, the flourish that only happens when tequila convinces you that you're a confident person who makes good decisions.
"No."
I sit up too fast. The room tilts. My stomach lurches in protest, and I have to breathe through my nose for a solid ten seconds to convince my body not to mutiny.
The contract stares at me from the nightstand, smug and damning.
I snatch it up. The paper crinkles in my fist as I scan the text.Client agrees to full protection detail for wedding event on June 12th. Services include but are not limited to: perimeter security, threat assessment, personal escort, and?—
My eyes snag on the next line, catching on it like a loose thread that unravels everything.
—fiancé simulation as required for emotional defense.
The letters seem to pulse on the page, each a tiny accusation.
"Oh god." The words come strangled, barely more than a whisper.
My free hand comes to cover my mouth, but it's too late. The horror is already spreading across my face, and the heat creeps up my neck.
"Oh god, oh god, ohgod."
The words unlock the memory like a trapdoor under my feet, and suddenly I'm falling backward through last night, through the tequila haze and the bad decisions, plummeting toward the exact moment when drunk-me decided that hiring a fake fiancé was not just acceptable, butbrilliant.
Last night.
Margarita number three, the one that tasted like poor choices and salt. I'd been crying into the glass, which is disgusting in retrospect but felt poetic at the time. The bartender had stopped asking if I was okay. He'd just kept refilling.
"Derek's the Best Man," I'd told the stranger next to me, a woman in a leather jacket who looked like she fought people for money. "My ex. At mysister'swedding. Do you know what that means?"
She'd shrugged. "That he's a dick?"
"That I have to sit through speeches about true love while he smirks at me from the head table." I'd drained the margarita. "I need backup. I need someone who'll make him feel as small as he made me feel when he said I was 'too much.'"
The woman had her head tilted behind the bar. "You want intimidation? That guy's been standing there for two hours without blinking."
I'd turned.
And there he was.
