his hand over his forehead. He didn’t do this. He didn’t drink to excess, and he didn’t have casual sex. When his brother had abandoned the family it had been up to Colton to hold it all together. To hold the people he loved most together.
Then, a few weeks before his wedding he’d found out that his father had had an affair that had resulted in a child who was now Colton’s age.
Now he was holding everyone together from that latest blow, too. His mother was so fragile one more thing would break her completely.
And this morning was evidence of why he had to live life the way he did. With control. With a code. Without it, he wasn’t much better than the other men in his family.
“We can’t get an annulment,” Lydia continued.
“We sure as hell can.” He spotted his pants and dropped the sheet, striding across the room and taking hold of them, tugging them on as quickly as possible.
“We sure as hell can’t,” Lydia said, turning around, her eyes going to his chest, then determinedly to his face. “I don’t know about you, but I texted quite a few people last night to let them know about our happy news.”
“Well, that isn’t my problem, princess.”
Seriously, he must still be a little bit drunk. He had no idea where the endearment had come from. Not that he was using it as an endearment.
“So, your plan is to return to town and let everybody know that we got married by accident? Tell them that we got drunk and made a mistake? People are going to assume we hooked up. Correctly, if the evidence is any indication.”
“What’s your plan?” he asked. “Staying married?”
“Yes. That’s exactly my plan.”
“Maybe you hit your head last night.”
She treated him to a withering glare, her brown eyes full of scorn. “Obviously I sustained some kind of head injury, Colton, if I slept with you,” she said.
He offered her a tight smile. “Maybe we both hit our heads.”
“Whatever. I don’t know if it’s escaped your notice but I’m currently running for mayor.”
He laughed. “Oh, I know. There’s no possible way I could have missed that, since that little stunt almost ruined the wedding.”
It was her turn to laugh. Hysterically. “First of all, it’s hardly a stunt. Second, I only almost ruined your wedding. Natalie actually ruined your wedding by not showing up.”
“You are her bridesmaid—her friend—and you started a campaign against her father.”
“Can you honestly tell me you think an...institution like Richard Bailey is the best thing for Copper Ridge? He’s entrenched in old-school ideas. He doesn’t know the new, vibrant economy the way that I do—”
“Are you actually stumping for votes right now?”
“No,” she said, her tone fierce. “I’m trying to explain to you why this annulment can’t happen. We have to find a way to spin the marriage, Colton, otherwise my campaign is doomed. I cannot come out of this looking flighty or like marriage is a joke to me or something.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “This kind of thing would be serious for anyone, but as a woman it’s even worse. The fact that I was single was never in my favor, because people questioned if I was cold or somehow felt above marriage and family and I just... This is the worst. I have to somehow manage to not look like a crazy person or I’m doomed.”
“Uh-huh.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “And can you explain to me why I should care about the state of your campaign?”
“Well, I don’t know. It could be because I am the best thing for the town, and that isn’t me being full of myself. It’s a fact.”
“I’ll reserve my judgment on that.”
“Go ahead. While you’re at it go ahead and reserve judgment on whether or not the sky is blue.”
“Honey, we live on the Oregon coast. The sky is usually gray.”
“Bite me.”
The command, which was really very immature, simmered between them. It did more than that. It caught fire. Sparks racing over his skin, prickling at the back of his neck. Being around her was always unsettling. But this was something else.
He gritted his teeth. “I very well might have last night. Neither of us remember, though, so I can’t be sure.”
He needed to get out of this hotel room. He needed to get out of this situation. Talking to Lydia, being near Lydia, it always made him feel edgy. Of all Natalie’s friends, she was his least favorite to deal with. There was just something about her that bothered him. And it was definitely mutual.
Right now, so was this other thing. That was a pretty serious problem.
She closed her eyes. “I’m going to ignore that.” She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, staring him down.
She moved mutely around the room, straightening things that didn’t need to be straightened, vibrating with unspent energy. He knew she was holding back a rant, which suited him just fine. He didn’t have any desire to hear it. Not at all.
He silently finished doing a sweep for his things, then looked back at his phone.
He had not sent any photos of Lydia and himself to his parents or to his sisters, thank God. He didn’t seem to have texted them at all, other than that one placating response to his mother.
Sierra had texted to ask if he was okay. And he also had two missed calls from her. His youngest sister was obviously very concerned. While Maddy, his other sister, had sent a text commanding him not to do anything stupid.
He looked across the room at the very, very stupid thing he’d done.
Too late for that.
“Here’s the thing,” Lydia said, as though sensing his attention shifting to her. “Natalie left you at the altar. She could have told you she was having second thoughts anytime, and she didn’t. She humiliated you in front of the entire town. And now you have a chance to get revenge.”
The damn woman was like a dog with a bone.
“You want us to stay married so that I can get revenge on her?”
She shook her head, dark hair cascading over her shoulders. “No, I want us to stay married because a scandal like a divorce is going to completely ruin my chances. If we tell people that we’ve always had feelings for each other and Natalie not showing up at the wedding gave you the perfect chance to fully realize those feelings...”
“Anybody who knows us will know that is not true.”
She lifted her hands up in the air and brought them back down hard, slapping her thighs. “And yet, we’re married. So, what does it matter what they know?”
He grabbed his phone off the bed and looked back down at it. He had a text from Natalie, response to the picture he had sent of Lydia and himself hanging all over each other in the bar.
What the hell is going on, Colton?
That was a good question, though he didn’t feel like the woman who left him at the altar had the right to question him. But even if she did, he didn’t have the answer.
He couldn’t remember being that person. Couldn’t remember that moment. And he certainly couldn’t reconcile the woman in the picture with the one standing in front of him glaring like he was something she had stepped in in a pasture.
He went back to the main screen in his messages. He had sent a few pictures of the impromptu wedding to some of the guys who worked for his construction company and hadn’t received any responses. A few of them probably had phones that were too old to view pictures. He had a feeling he had been intending to send them to Natalie, but