AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You speak French?” I asked him, feeling betrayed.
“Naw. I was just texting.”
“Ah. Now I understand,” I said, nodding, but I didn’t understand anything. Who was this guy that I was married to? French?
“It’s like expensive steak, isn’t it?” he asked, pursing his lips, then turned to carefully cup my face in his hands. “My darling bride, your father’s fortune, fame, and power make my family look like big box store managers. You’re talking a global conglomerate’s iron fist versus a little country’s figurehead.”
I stared at him. “What country’s figurehead is your…” Mackenzie. Like President Jackson Mackenzie of the United States of America? Percy was the president’s son? I stopped breathing.
“Hey, it’s not a big deal,” he said, patting my hand and looking freaked out. Like he hadn’t run away from home to get away from the responsibility attached to that kind of family.
I swallowed hard and gasped a breath. “I’m going to pretend the last five minutes didn’t happen.”
He patted my hand. “Good thinking. What do you want to do for the honeymoon?”
I blinked at him. He was the president’s son. How was I supposed to forget about that?
My mom leaned over and patted his knee. “You should come to the healery. The upstairs rooms still don’t have roofs, so the two of you can be together beneath the open moonlit sky. Doesn’t that sound romantic?”
My dad was a gargoyle with gargoyles flying around and above our house every night. And Percy was the president’s son. There would be so much security. I’d never be alone again. I cleared my throat. “That’s one idea.”
“A great one,” Percy added with a serious nod.
“It is certainly unique,” Mrs. President said with her polite smile.
“You are all so affirming. It must be because you speak French,” my mother said, patting Percy’s knee again. Of course it was, not because they were politicians who you could never trust no matter what they said. No wonder Percy was so intolerable. And we were married. And I loved him so much that I’d probably have no problem honeymooning in the open air with as many gargoyles as you could count looking on.
“Come on! It’s not fancy, but it is sushi, and what’s better than that?” My mother’s irrepressible enthusiasm for sushi was impossible to resist, also her grip on my wrist. Going to the Cat’s Pause five minutes after I accidentally married Percy of No Mercy was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. But I couldn’t tell my mother that.
When we went inside it was already crowded.
Rynne waved at me from the bar and threw an apron at me. “Gabby’s here! My mom’s going to kiss you!”
For a second I hesitated, but having a reason to run away from my husband and his mother was exactly what I needed.
I twisted out of my mom’s grasp, pulled on the apron and sprinted to the bar, rolling over it like I was at a skate park. I went through the doors to the kitchen before Rynne could do more than blink at me. I headed straight to the freezer, where I went in and closed the door behind me. It would take hours to freeze to death, so it’s not like I was in danger, but I needed to calm down, because every time I remembered the foreign words he was texting, the name and family he was permanently bound to, and me with him, I started hyperventilating. What the crap was I thinking getting married to some prissy little president’s son when I was wearing cut-offs and an indecent gnome shirt? I wasn’t thinking. That’s right, I wasn’t going to marry him today, but some time in the future with people who we invited, because we intentionally got married, not accidentally in a moment of who-knew-what? Because I didn’t know Percy, I mean Jackson, I mean Cupcakes.
I was pacing, panicking, hands shaking, and feeling my ribs and wrist. What was Rynne thinking, that I could wait tables when I couldn’t hold a tray? She was just thinking that I was the same old Gabby who would do the crap no one else wanted to do because I had no shame, and here I’d married some prissy rich guy, and apparently I had shame, because I was deeply shamed by the whole thing, and it wasn’t me, no, I was fine being poor and imperfect, but how could I be married to a completely different world? He’d expect me to be pulled together like his mom, to represent the family name, and the whole flipping country?
The freezer door opened, and I ducked behind an enormous shark just hanging there, reminding me of Percy’s mom.
“Hey, Gabby, it’s Libby. How’s it going?” She shut the door and came in, leaving us in the dimness of the emergency blue light above.
I slowly came out from behind the shark. “I got married.”
She nodded. “Your mom told everyone.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Do you see what I’m wearing? He’s the President’s son.”
“Then you can get a nice tour of the white house, maybe a discount at all the national parks.”
I looked up, frowning. “Now I feel much better.”
She smiled and squeezed my shoulder. “I know. It’s like culture shock plus money shock plus a lot of other shocks. I married a vampire. I hate vampires, but I married one that’s also a dragon, and if there’s anything I hate worse than a vampire, it’s a dragon, but here I am, Mrs. Vampire-Dragon, and I’m happier than I dreamt possible. He’s everything you have hate and contempt for, but you married him anyway.”
“Is that it? That is it. He always represented those vile rich obnoxious brats who I cleaned up after, and it turns out that he’s more vile, rich, and obnoxious than I ever imagined, plus royalty, and please, who runs away to escape his oppressive wealth so he can slum it at Gray College? Idiot doesn’t even know what slumming is. Probably thinks the Osprey is some dive. I’ll show him dive.”
She laughed and pulled me into a hug. “I’m sure you will. His band is out there, and they’re all playing, and he’s standing on the piano with Ma’am Granite while his mom is getting drunk on bright elixir with your mom.”
