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I turn back to the old man and do my best to enunciate clearly for this part of the story time. Partially because I want to make sure he hears me, but mostly because I want to make sure I hear myself. “Don’t worry. My time with him has officially come to an end. Just a crazy story from Vegas that’ll live in my history book forever.” I nod, resolute. “It was one night, and I’m leaving here in a better position than when I came. Period. That’s it. The end.”
Technically, I still have paperwork to file with USCIS, but that’s just semantics at this point. Pretty sure the hard part—finding a willing man to marry me in the name of saving my ass—has been achieved.
The old man nods sagely, his eyes full of wisdom and agreement and the perfect amount of kindness I need to take a full, uninhibited breath.
“You’re exactly right, dear,” he says then, making the corners of my mouth turn up with a smile. “Some stories are meant to teach you—the heart is a muscle that doesn’t bend.”
What? No, that’s not what I—
“Don’t back down. If you really love him, that man’ll be yours in the end.”
All I can do is smile through nervous tears as they bust their way out of my eyes of their own accord.
Come on, Daisy. He’s just talking nonsense. He’s not even having the same conversation as you. You can’t seriously be considering anything he says as valid…can you?
I look straight ahead and lift my vodka cranberry up to my lips and take a gulp. Now that my subconscious is asking the tough questions, my plane neighbor isn’t the only one hard of hearing.
I hold out my left hand in front of me and inspect the gold band intently. It shines beneath the overhead light above my seat, and I silently wonder why I’m still even wearing it.
I mean, it’s not like this is a real marriage.
Eventually, I take the ring off my finger and slip it into my pocket and lean back into my seat.
Home, I tell myself. Just get back to life as usual. Normal. Day-to-day. And put Flynn Winslow in the only place he belongs—front and center on the immigration paperwork.
And that, my friends, is that.
Tuesday, April 9th, Los Angeles
Daisy
I am back in the land of Hollywood, where the views are beautiful, the smog is never-ending, the sun is always shining, and your odds of spotting a random celebrity at every Starbucks in the city are surprisingly good.
It’s been over a year since Damien Ellis offered me a job and I packed up all my belongings and traveled across the border to move in to my new home-away-from-home—Los Angeles. Growing up in Canada, Vancouver to be specific, I never thought I’d call a big American city like LA home, but here I am, living and working and thriving.
Well, I was thriving, until I managed to put a prominent snag into my American dream dress and sew it up with a marriage pact patch, of all things. I mean, what world am I living in, and is it financed by the Hallmark Channel?
Ha. Not likely. The Hallmark Channel doesn’t showcase movies revolving around immigration fraud, and they certainly don’t include men who dirty-talk like Flynn.
I’ve been back from Vegas for less than forty-eight hours, and to say I’ve yet to wrap my mind around what went down in Sin City would be the understatement of the century. I’ve been like the Energizer Bunny, just pacing back and forth while I beat the same dang drum of truth over and over again.
I’m married now. I’m someone’s wife. Wedded. My knot is tied, my chain has a ball on the end of it, I’m as hitched as one of Gwen’s past flavor-of-the-month’s fifth-wheel camper.
Married. To someone I hardly know and who just so happened to make a pact with me that ended in us saying “I do” in front of a drag queen Marilyn Monroe.
And all of that doesn’t even consider the fact that we had the hottest sex of my life before parting ways.
I let out a sigh. Nope, not going there. No way in hell am I going to step foot in that minefield of sexual confusion.
Because, technically, I’m still illegally living and working in the United States, and correcting the type of problem that involves Uncle Sam definitely takes priority over the Flynn-inspired charley horse in my vagina.
There’s no time for excuses or procrastination. I have to do what I need to do to rectify my expired-visa situation, and I have to do it now—even if it has nothing to do with what I should be doing on a Tuesday in the middle of my workday.
Somehow, I’m going to have to pull a rabbit out of my hat and fit in my actual work to-do list, which is a mile long, at the very end of the day. It’ll be tough, but I’d look like shit in an orange jumpsuit and I’m certainly not photogenic enough to make a mugshot look good, so there’s really no other option.
