Waking Up Married: A Rock Star Rom Com Read online

  I got so drunk last night that I married my best friend’s older brother.

  Only this time, I can’t say I’m entirely sure I regret what I did last night as the truth starts to dawn this morning.

  CHAPTER 11: ADAM

  This is either an actual nightmare or the worst hangover of my life.

  This can’t be real.

  We didn’t really get married...did we?

  The marriage license seems to be evidentiary proof, and the fact that Amber and Rascal remember everything further corroborates the story.

  But it’s just so...unbelievable. You can’t just get married drunk and out of the blue in Vegas.

  Can you?

  “Show us the video.” It’s the last piece of the puzzle I need to actually start to believe it’s true.

  Rascal pulls out his phone, clicks a few buttons, and hands it to me. “I took a bunch. They’re all in a gallery titled Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.”

  “Fuck you,” I say, glaring at him as I practically rip the phone out of his hands. I look over at Emily. “Want to see?” I ask, and she nods somewhat reluctantly. We both move over to the couch where she can sit next to me and we can watch together.

  I hit play on the first video, and a very drunk me is dancing with a very drunk Emily at the MGM. This was before we left the club. “Get that out of my face!” I yell at Rascal, who continues to film as I give Emily a sloppy kiss. Her hands are all over me and mine are all over her, and we’re clearly into each other.

  I clear my throat in embarrassment as I speed through the rest of the video and click on the next one. We’re walking outside, and we clearly hear Amber say to Rascal as he films us making out again, “Do you think they’d shut the hell up about being relationship people if they just married each other?”

  “Definitely. And then they’d be busy consummating so we can do some consummating of our own.” On the video, Rascal laughs. I glance over at him, and he’s not laughing. In fact, he looks a little nervous that I’m going to murder him, and I just might.

  I return my eyes to the small screen, and I watch as Amber taps Emily on the shoulder and we break from our kiss to look at her. “You two should marry each other. Here. Tonight.”

  “We can’t just marry each other out of the blue,” Emily says. “Duh. We need like a marriage certificate and some places require a waiting period.”

  In the video, I look horrified that she knows these things, but now as I watch back, I can’t help but wonder how she knows these things. I glance over at her, and she lifts a shoulder a little defensively.

  “I looked it up when I thought Chad and I might get married someday.”

  I nod and feel a little bad for her, not in the pitying kind of way but in the sympathizing kind of way. I thought about marrying Bree someday, too, but those thoughts are long behind me.

  Especially now that I have a wife.

  Oh fuck.

  The next video shows us signing the very same certificate Rascal just showed us. The time stamp on it is 11:12 last night, forty-eight minutes before the office closed.

  There’s another video of us making out in the back of an Uber, and then we’re walking down the aisle in a chapel. The video is cut off when we hear “No videography in the chapel!” in the background.

  “Oh yeah,” Amber says, like she’s just remembering pieces of the night herself. She opens a box sitting on the counter and pulls out a sheet of paper on top. She walks it over to us. “You got the deluxe wedding package. Here’s everything that was included and the link and password to your ceremony is at the bottom.”

  I close my eyes for a beat as I try to allow my slow brain to play catch up while the truth slams into me.

  I got drunk-married to my little sister’s best friend last night.

  I play lead guitar for an incredibly successful band.

  I make a shitload of money.

  A shitload of money that my wife is now technically entitled to since we didn’t have a lawyer draft up a prenup before the wedding.

  Jesus. This girl and I were having a fun connection last night, and sure, she’s the first girl I’ve talked to that made me hopeful again since Bree and I ended things...but marriage?

  I hardly know her.

  Maybe we’ve known each other a long time, but we’ve never really talked apart from small talk. Last night was the first time I actually sat down and had a real conversation with her...at least that I can recall in recent years.

  We can’t stay married.

  We have to fix this, and I think I know the answer.

  Emily clicks play on the last video in Rascal’s album. We’re stumbling into our hotel room, our mouths connected as we move toward my bedroom. It’s dark, and we’re not looking where we’re going. I knock into a lamp, we bump into a wall, we tumble onto the couch. We thrash around a little, and then the entire couch tips over. We hear laughing from Amber and our cameraman, but we’re laughing and kissing and laughing some more, and if I wasn’t so completely embarrassed about what we did last night, I might find this video hot. I watch as we stand up and walk toward the bedroom door. “Are we gonna consummate?” Emily slurs on the video. “Ooh, we need to consummate on a honeymoon! Take me somewhere tropical. Hawaii, maybe?”

  And then, like a cheesy episode of The Bachelor when they go into their fantasy suites (hey, my sister watches, okay?), I look at the camera before closing the door.

  And then I open the door one more time, say, “I’m about to consummate the fuck out of this marriage,” and slam it in Rascal’s face before the camera cuts out and the video ends.

  I can’t look at her after that comment, especially since we both woke up naked. We almost definitely had sex last night, and I didn’t find a condom, so not only did we recklessly get married, we carelessly had unprotected sex for our first time together and we can’t even remember any of it.

  I set Rascal’s phone on the coffee table and stand. I flip the couch back upright and settle the cushions into place.

  It’s quiet in the suite. I glance at Emily, who is tapping furiously away on her phone, and I look over at Amber and Rascal, who are sifting through the deluxe contents of our wedding box.

  I have to admit, I’m semi-curious what’s included in the deluxe package, but I can’t even think straight. I’m still hungover as fuck after getting blackout drunk last night, I’m hungry, I’m nauseous, and I’m married.

  What the fuck? This makes no sense.

  A few minutes later, I’m still cleaning the mess we made last night in the suite. Rascal and Amber disappeared, so it’s just Emily and me in the main living area. Someone must’ve gotten hungry last night because there are plates of half-eaten snacks on the table and fries littering the floor.

  “Annulment!” Emily says triumphantly. I focus my gaze on her, a bit of relief coursing through me that she’s the one bringing up the word. “It completely erases a marriage, just like it never happened.”

  “Thank God,” I murmur without looking at her face to gauge her reaction, though I can’t imagine she’d feel insulted that I’m relieved we have the chance to erase what we did.

  She taps some more buttons, and then her face falls.

  “What?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Shit. I knew it was too good to be true.” She glances up at me, and my brows come together in confusion.

  “What was?” I ask.

  “Annulment. It says right here that you need more than regret for an annulment. The only grounds for it are if we’re blood relatives, one of us was already married, or if there was fraud, non-consent, or mental incompetence.”

  “Mental incompetence? We couldn’t have been mentally competent in that state,” I say.

  She shakes her head as her shoulders hunch up with weight. “We were competent enough to obtain a license, and Rascal’s videos prove we, uh, consummated our marriage.” Her cheeks turn red at her words.

  I sigh. “So divorce?”

  Her face falls, and I ha
te how my chest tightens at the sight of it.

  Her words from last night are like a dagger right through my heart. Marriage is supposed to be once and forever.

  And divorce takes that away.

  It was a drunken mistake, though. We didn’t get married because we’re in love and we see a future together.

  I swear I’m never drinking again.

  CHAPTER 12: ADAM

  “Wait a minute. What about our tattoos?” Emily asks, breaking the tension after I mentioned the D word. She picks Rascal’s phone back up and scrolls through the album of videos from last night.

  “Here,” I say, leaning over her shoulder and pointing to one that looks like it could be a tattoo parlor. I wonder if the video before it shows whose idea it was, but it doesn’t really matter. We apparently did more than one permanent thing last night, but everything is removable for the right price.

  Inked in Vegas appears in neon on the screen. “I’ll give you a thousand bucks,” I hear myself say on the video.

  The receptionist shakes her head.

  “Five thousand.”

  “Go home,” the receptionist says. “Sleep it off and come back tomorrow.”

  “Ten thousand.”

  The receptionist looks at me like I’m crazy, but then she calls someone else over. He comes into view, a tall, burly guy with a long beard. The two of them exchange some words that Rascal’s phone didn’t pick up, and then he looks over at us and nods.

  “We want our initials and our wedding date in Roman numerals,” I watch myself say.

  “In matching spots on our wrists,” Emily says, holding up her wrist and pointing to where she wants it, which is exactly where she got it.

  Well that definitely clears up the meaning of A&E XII-X. Yesterday was December tenth, a date I’ll never forget with a night I can’t remember.

  “That’s simple enough. Pick your font,” the artist says. “But beware that it’s going to bleed. A lot. Especially if you’ve been drinking.”

  “A little blood never killed anyone,” I say.

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly true, but ten grand is ten grand,” the tattoo artist mutters. We point to the font we want, and the video ends there.

  I look over at Emily. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I feel like we did a lot of permanent damage last night.”

  She lifts a shoulder, but she looks pretty miserable. “It’s not like I was fighting you on any of it. So no need to apologize, hubby.”

  I look over at her, and I can’t help my laugh. “Did you seriously just call me hubby?”

  She nods with a little sparkle in her eyes. “What else can we do at this point but laugh about it?”

  “Good point, wifey.”

  She laughs, and as awful as I feel right now, that sweet sound spilling from my wife makes me think that somehow everything’s going to be okay.

  “I’m gonna go take a shower. I think that’ll help me clear my head a little.” She offers a weak smile and then disappears behind the door where she and my sister got ready last night.

  I think back to what a simpler time that was. Little did she know she was dressing up for her wedding.

  That one millisecond of tranquility with Emily is shot straight to hell when I hear some banging on the door.

  I open the door to Dax and Kylie, both of whom appear to be in a state of frenzy. “You got married last night?” Dax asks, sidestepping me and walking right into the suite.

  Kylie follows behind him, clipboard in hand. She always means business when she has a clipboard.

  “Apparently. And man, Rascal didn’t keep that quiet for long,” I say, incorrectly assuming it was Rascal who spilled the beans to the rest of my band.

  Dax’s brows furrow. “Rascal? What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t that how you found out?” I ask as confusion sets in...and then even more horror. My heart starts racing and I feel a little sick. “Oh no. No no no. Don’t tell me—”

  He cuts me off by telling me exactly what I don’t want to hear. “It’s all over the gossip rags. That asshole who does Celebrity Snaps broke the story first.”

  “Fuck. We need damage control,” I mutter, turning my gaze to Kylie.

  She holds up one hand as if to stop me. “I’m your manager, not your publicist.”

  I give her a pleading look, and she sighs with frustration. “I’m already on it, Adam. I got in touch with Jenny and we’re working together on damage control.” She lowers her voice. “What were you thinking? Was this what you wanted?”

  I shake my head. “Apparently we were both blackout drunk and thought getting married would be a good idea.”

  She glances down at her own engagement ring, holding it up to show me like a damn trophy. “Weddings are supposed to mean something. Marriage is between you and someone you love, not someone you barely know.”

  “Look, mother, you can save the lecture,” I hiss. “I know I fucked up, all right?”

  Dax jumps in. “Don’t be an asshole to her because you’re battling an epic hangover. She’s trying to fix this for you. She’s on your side.”

  She shakes her head and glares at me. “I expected something like this from Rascal or Brody, but not from you.” Her phone chirps, and she glares at me one last time before she steps over toward the bar to answer the call, leaving Dax and me alone.

  “What happened, man?” he asks.

  I collapse back on the couch then lean forward with my elbows on my knees, hanging my head with something close to shame. “I don’t even know.”

  Regret. That’s the predominant feeling as the reality of what we did last night slams into me.

  “When I was talking to her last night before the tequila shots, for the first time in six months, I felt like I was ready to date again. And instead of asking her out on a date, apparently we agreed to be husband and wife.” I glance up at Dax with a sigh.

  “And how are you feeling this morning?”

  I lift both palms up. “Aside from the hangover, I just feel like shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. And beyond that, how stupid was I to marry someone without thinking through the potential consequences? Even if I loved her and wanted to commit to her, it’s still good sense to sign something to protect my assets.”

  He nods and eyes me thoughtfully. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “We can’t get it annulled. Emily looked it up and the website actually said that regret isn’t grounds for an annulment.”

  “You’re kidding!” Kylie’s shriek pulls Dax and me out of our private conversation. She turns to face Dax with a huge smile on her face. “Okay, I’ll let them know and I’ll be in touch.” She hangs up the phone. “You’re never going to believe this.”

  “What?” I ask.

  She grins as she looks from Dax to me. “Jenny just called with the comp numbers. I knew we were up, but individual song sales are up six hundred percent from where they average this time on a Saturday morning, specifically ‘What Did We Just Do’ and ‘Love out of Nowhere.’ Album sales on No Room for Regrets are up three hundred percent.”

  I look at Dax, and he looks at me. He seems to have known this was coming, but I’m just confused.

  “MFB is back in the news, and it’s doing amazing things for the band,” she clarifies, a little giddy as she bobs up and down on her toes.

  “So what are you saying?” I ask.

  “I’m saying maybe what you did last night isn’t the worst thing in the world. I’m saying maybe you need to stay married a little while. All of America saw you and Bree break up on Rock on the Road, Adam. You’re giving them the hope they need that they can have their happy endings even after suffering through a broken heart.”

  “You want me to stay married to someone I hardly know because I’m giving America hope?” I repeat.

  Kylie nods, and I can tell by the look on her face that an idea is forming. She glances at Dax, and I feel like they have some sort of nonverbal conversation before she looks back at me. “I need y
ou to give it six months.”

  “Six months?” I repeat, shock and awe in my voice that she’d even suggest such a thing. I can’t stay married to someone I hardly know for the next six months, and certainly she wouldn’t want to stay married to me, either.

  “Yes. And there’s another reason why I’m asking you for six months.” She looks a little nervous as I narrow my eyes at her, but then she blurts it out. She looks at Dax again, and he nods. “Mark and Dax have been talking about doing a special season of Rock on the Road. A reunion special of sorts. We haven’t signed any contracts yet but we were going to have a band meeting on Sunday to discuss our options. Cameras would follow us on and off for the next couple months, and then footage would go to production, and then it would air in the late spring. We’d need you to stay married through the premier, and then you can do whatever you want.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” I shake my head resolutely. This is not happening. I look at Dax. “You’re on board with this?” I’m frankly shocked. Dax is an executive producer of Rock on the Road, so I know he’ll take care of me—of all of us. But he was once on a different show that ended up portraying him in a way he wasn’t expecting, so he’s always been adamant about keeping the real in reality TV.

  “The numbers don’t lie. I knew about revisiting the show, but Kylie and I think the newlywed angle and you getting the happy ending viewers wanted for you could mean incredible things for MFB. Besides, it’s only for half a year.”

  I shake my head. “This is stupid. She’ll never agree to it anyway.”

  “Just think about it before you say no,” Dax says.

  I look over at him. “Are you serious right now?”

  He shrugs.

  “You two came here this morning to ambush me about this, not to talk it out as friends, didn’t you?” I accuse.

  Neither of them denies it, and it sort of makes me feel alone in the midst of two people I thought I could trust.

  Dax has been like a brother to me for the last fifteen years, and Kylie became a sister when she joined our little band-family.

  But they’re asking me to do something I’m not totally on board with, and I’m afraid that because they’re like family to me, I’m going to agree to do it.