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I’m feeling a million things and it’s probably not fair to Titan, but the biggest one of those is feeling like a failure. I can hear Hope and Charity condemning me now, telling me how my life has just been one major screw-up after another. I can even see the looks on their faces. I gaze up at Titan. He’s a good man. I’m convinced of that. I’ve spent my time with bad and Titan is completely different. If I were ever going to get married, I’d want it to be to a man like him—a good man.
“I’m dying of old age here, Faith.”
A good man is an asshole.
“This says I agree the marriage was a mistake,” I tell him, frowning and trying to read his face. As a blackjack dealer, I got really good at reading people’s emotions and find their “tells.” Titan is pretty closed off, but right now I see disbelief on his face and more than a little bit of anger.
“Fuck yeah. You going to tell me it wasn’t?”
“Well, I mean, I don’t know. It could be, because Lord knows you’re not exactly sweet and tender.”
“You have got to be fucking me.”
I bite my lip at his choice of words and the images they evoke.
“Who’s to say though? Maybe the marriage wasn’t a mistake. We might make a great married couple.”
“You really are fucking with me right now,” he growls and I cross my hands at my chest.
“Why is it so hard to believe that being married to me wouldn’t be the end of the world?” I huff defensively.
“Because I’m engaged!” he growls and my body goes completely still. It feels like lead, solid and hard to move.
“You had sex with me when you were engaged?” I whisper, almost choking on the words. I thought Titan was a good man. I felt inside of me that he was. I liked him!
I am a fool.
My sisters are right; I just keep making mistake after mistake.
“I was drunk! I didn’t know what I was doing. Hell, you could have been a hooker off the street,” he growls.
And the blows just keep coming. Trouble is, this one cuts deep. I feel it slice through me like a hot knife. I swallow down the hurt and the damaged pride. I don’t have time to feel those, and I’d never let anyone see it anyway—especially Titan.
“Who’s your fiancée? Does she know about me?”
“I—”
“You know what, never mind. It’s none of my business.”
“Will you just sign—”
“You know what? It is my business. I bet she doesn’t know anything about me. I bet she’s just laughing and happily planning a wedding to a man who is a lying, cheating, cretin!”
“Cretin?”
“That’s what I said, buckaroo. And if the stupid fits wear it! I can’t believe you. You made me a scarlet woman and I didn’t even know! Your fiancée will hate me!”
“She won’t. But does it even matter? Not like you will ever meet her.”
“So that’s your game? What Mrs. Big Daddy don’t know won’t hurt her?”
“Will you stop getting upset over nothing?” he sighs. “You’re starting to attract attention.”
“I don’t care! You just told me you were engaged to get married to another woman and married me instead. How do you think that makes me feel, Titan?”
“Ask me if I care, Faith,” he dares me rather bitchily and further proving that, despite my first assessment, Titan is not a good guy. He’s a complete and utter asshole.
“Ask me if I’m going to give you an annulment, Titan?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, husband, that I’m going to protest the annulment. I’m not giving it to you.”
“Why in the hell not?”
“I’m doing this for your fiancée!” I proclaim, standing up.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he barks and there are several gasps of shock around us. Good! I hope they throw him out for using coarse language. It’ll serve him right!
“I’m saying that if you’re married to me, you can’t break another woman’s heart. One who probably cares for you. So I’m not giving you an annulment!”
“You can’t keep me married to you, Faith. I can get a divorce on my own.”
“Then go ahead and file for a divorce! Have the papers sent to my Aunt Ida Sue in Texas. Hope can give you the address,” I yell, heading for the exit.
“Where in the fuck are you going?” he asks.
“I’m going back to my jeep in Buck-Stop and then I’m driving to Arkansas!”
“You don’t have a way there and I’m sure as hell not taking you,” he returns, his voice as loud and as angry as mine—but his sounds scarier.
“I didn’t ask you to, Big Daddy. I’m fine on my own!”
“I can drive you, sweetheart,” a giant bear of a man says from the corner. One look at him and I peg him as a trucker. He has a faded blue Ford baseball cap on, a flannel long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, faded jeans and a white T-shirt—with what I hope are coffee stains. He’s got a long brown beard, and a mop of hair just as long.
