“Why not tell me that on the phone? Why not get my agent to call me?”
“Shit. What if it is about the wedding?”
This is the last thing I wanted—for Dex to worry. I guess I suck at trying to hide my concern. “Let’s try not to completely freak out yet.” Even if I’m already way past that. “We don’t know what it’s about.”
We totally know what it’s about. I just don’t know how Graham found out.
And the second we walk through the doors at our practice arena in Summerlin, Graham’s there to meet us. “Follow me.”
We wheel our suitcases with us, and every time mine makes a clicking noise on the cracks between the tiled floor, I swear the sound is mocking me. It rolls along to the sound of “You’re fired, you’re fired, you’re fired.”
They won’t terminate our contracts over a harmless joke … will they?
Graham leads us to one of the small conference rooms, giving away nothing in his expression.
“What’s going on?” I ask as we take our seats at the round table.
Graham’s gray eyes hold the kind of disappointment I’ve seen from each and every one of my coaches at some point in my career, and that’s when I know for sure …
He slides his tablet over to us. “Marriage licenses are public record, boys.”
Okay, now we can officially freak out.
I look at the screen, but it doesn’t make sense. “We didn’t file it,” I murmur.
“What I want to know is what you two are doing getting married in the first place,” Graham says. “Without telling us. We were blindsided by this, but it’s lucky that we caught it first.”
“How? How did you catch it?” I ask.
Dex sits next to me, either stunned into silence or not quite understanding what’s going on.
“You don’t think we keep tabs on every single one of our players?” Graham asks. “If something new pops up about any of you on the internet, we know about it first. So, married, huh?”
“It’s not supposed to be legally. We did it as a goof,” I say.
Graham’s lips purse. “A goof.”
“We didn’t file the certificate we signed.” I turn to Dex. “Did we?”
Dex takes out his wallet and pulls out a folded piece of paper.
He … kept it on him?
“It’s right here. We didn’t file it with the registrar.” Dex hands it over to Graham.
Where we’re expecting more confusion, Graham stares at us how the media looks at Dex a lot. Like we’re the biggest dumbasses to ever dumb.
“What do you two know about weddings? I can’t assume much considering neither of you have been married before.”
“Uh, that would be a correct assumption,” I say.
“Well, when two people love each other very much,” he says dryly, “and they want to get married in Vegas, they sign two things. The official marriage license from the license bureau and then the certificate.” He places the certificate next to the tablet and taps the paper. “Decorative certificate.” Now he points to the license. “Official marriage record. Congratulations. You’re now husband and husband.”
We’re … legally married?
Fucking, fuck fuck.
Nine
DEX
“But … we didn’t file it …” It’s only been pointed out seventy-two times already, but I can’t move past it. Even if there were two things we had to sign, the article I skimmed said we were the ones who had to register the marriage, and we didn’t do it.
I told Tripp it would be fine.
And I’ve messed up again.
As I stare at the two certificates, it finally starts to sink in.
I’m married.
I have a husband.
I swing around to Tripp. “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it.” I turn to Graham. “I am going to fix it.” This fuckup is on me. I stand, ready to head out and do whatever needs to be done. Divorces are a thing people do. Hell, a lot of our teammates have already been through one, so this isn’t anything new.
I’ll just—
“Sit down, Dex,” Graham says.
I’m stiff as I lower myself back into the seat next to Tripp. He hasn’t looked at me once since the news, and I’m itching to comfort him with affection, but the energy comes out as uncontrolled fidgeting instead.
“Given this was a goof,” Graham levels us with a stare, “I take it you’re not planning to stay married?”
Tripp answers too quickly for me to even give the question thought. “Of course not.”
“That’s what I was worried about. Best friends turned husbands we could work with, but two idiots making a mockery of marriage is more difficult. The media will have a field day.”
I’m used to being called an idiot, but Tripp’s neck turns red, and then his cheeks follow.
“It wasn’t a mockery. It was …” Well, an experiment doesn’t sound much better. “This was all my fault.”
Graham points to the tablet again. “That’s not Tripp’s signature?”
“It is,” Tripp answers. “We were both there. This is on both of us.”
“I told him it wouldn’t count. It was supposed to be a bit of fun.”
“Did it occur to you for a second, Dex, that same-sex couples fought hard for marriage equality? They faced pushback from people saying the divorce rate would increase because queer couples couldn’t be committed.”
“It’s not entirely Dex’s fault,” Tripp says. “I didn’t have to agree to it.”
“And yet you got married anyway. I thought you of all people, Tripp, would know to take something like this seriously.” Graham slides the marriage certificate back toward me, and I numbly take it and put it carefully back in my wallet.
“So what are you saying?” Tripp asks. “You want us to pretend to be married for real?”
“What aren’t you getting? You are married ‘for real.’ But, no. We’re your representatives, not your owners. All we’re asking for is some time to figure out how to spin this, because the media will get wind of it sooner or later, and we need to be ahead of the story. A quickie wedding and a snap divorce will not look good for either of you or the team.”
Tripp glances at me and then away again. “What are our options?”
“You can’t get divorced. Not yet. Divorces are also public record, and news sites scour those for celebrity gossip. Hell, they probably do it for marriages too, which means we’re on borrowed time. We’ll look into getting you two an annulment, which means it never happened in the first place, but that might take a while. In the meantime, all we want from you is to lie low. If worse comes to worst, we tell everyone the marriage is real, we trade one of you, and then when you file for divorce, you can tell the media the distance was too hard—”
My gut bottoms out. “No. No, you can’t trade us. We’re the Mitchell brothers, people come to see us together, we’re two of the strongest players on the team—”
Tripp squeezes my arm, which cuts off my panic. But instead of reassuring me, it only reminds me that I could lose this.