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Chapter 1
🕑 Added 2021-09-15 02:25:28 +0000 UTCThe first thing I noticed when I woke up was how hard it actually was to wake up. I would never say I’m a morning person but I didn’t typically have this much difficulty with waking up in the morning. But at the moment, I could have cried with how much I didn’t want to wake up. I couldn’t even get my eyes to open because I was sure it was much too bright in the room and I just knew my eyes, or my head, wouldn’t like it.
The next thing I recognized was the killer hang-over I was experiencing. This was my first hang-over ever and I never wanted to have another one ever again. The fact my head was pounding along to an unknown beat that was the fastest and loudest I had every felt, just solidified the fact that I knew I wouldn’t like to open my eyes and face the light. What a way to wake up after my 21st birthday party: with a hangover and a killer headache.
Although it wasn’t so much a party as it was going to every bar Las Vegas had to offer that caught our attention and looked like fun. I had never drank alcohol before since my dad was the Police Chief of our small town and he had made sure I was raised with a nice respect of the law. Meaning, if I was caught doing anything he would ‘accidently’ make it somehow worse for me because he expected better of me; he expected me to know right from wrong and to do the right thing. I wouldn’t say I was a ‘goody two-shoes’ because of it but I definitely wasn’t one to break the law. I just saw no point in breaking the law and then having to spend time in jail. So when I turned twenty-one, a group of my friends, all of which were annoyingly older than me, decided to welcome me to the world of drinking by taking me to Las Vegas for a long weekend of drinking. Thankfully we had a few weeks before school started and I was unemployed thanks to my best friend being spoiled and having parents that paid for our apartment and expenses for said apartment, I didn’t have to bother taking time off from school or work for my birthday.
My group of closest friends, all of which had been adopted into the same family by odd and very sad circumstances, had made sure I had the best birthday weekend possible. We had paid for two rooms for the two couples and another room for the two single people. Although Rosalie ended up getting that room to herself since she used her own funds she had inherited from her parents. Emmett ended up with Jasper and Alice. The couple didn’t mind since Alice had ended up being too drunk to do any ‘adult activities’ when they finally got to their room; she was much too tired, like the rest of us, to do anything.
For the last night in Vegas, we went all out. It hadn’t taken long for me to get so drunk that the last thing I remembered was thinking we still had a lot of time until we had to get back to our hotel for sleep and that I was excited to get to the next bar. After that, I’m waking up with a killer headache and all I wanted was for it to stop.
I lazily stretched into a sitting position and it was then I realized a few more, very important, things. The first, the one that didn’t scare me the most, was that I could hear a shower going in the bathroom. It was hearing that, that made me realize I wasn’t in my room. I was in Rosalie’s room, which initially wasn’t a bad thing since we were best friends. I knew it was Rosalie’s room because I had spent a lot of time in it while I waited for her to get ready for us to go out. I wasn’t worried about hearing Rose in the shower, we did live together and I always heard when she took a shower. What I was worried about was the next thing I realized: I was naked.
Literally naked. The only thing covering me was the thin sheet from the bed. The realization of my state of undress only helped to worsen my headache. As much as I wanted to crawl further under the thicker blankets that were mostly on the floor, I really didn’t want to be here when Rose walked out of the shower. We may be best friends, but I had never once woken up naked in her bed. I had woken up in her bed when I used to sleep over at her house all the time as we were growing up but this was entirely different. We were adults and being naked in my best friends’ bed wasn’t a thing adult friends normally do.
As fast as my hangover induced headache would let me, I crawled out of bed and started to look for my clothes. I wanted to quickly get dressed and sneak back in mine and Edwards’s room that was just a few floors below. Rose had wanted the suite because according to her, she was in Vegas for the first time and she wanted it to be the best experience she could get.
Now though, I was hating that she had such a large room. It had taken several minutes for me to find my clothes; which threw me off because I had no idea why my clothes would have been so spread apart. I had raced around the room and tossed my clothes on the bed in an effort to find all the clothes as fast as possible. I was still missing my bra and a sock by the time I heard the shower turn off and I mentally cursed my bad luck. I had just barely started to put on my panties when the door opened and Rose started to walk out of the room in the robe she had brought with her because, as she claimed, the hotel robes were never good enough for her to wear.
In an effort to not have her see me naked, which something told me she already had, I tried to both finish putting on my panties and sit on the bed so I could grab the sheet to cover me. Needless to say, in my panic to do two things that can’t really be done at the same time, I fell. Naturally, since I was already in an embarrassing situation, I didn’t just fall on the bed. I fell on the floor. The one saving grace was that I at least had the bed in between me and Rose.
“I thought you had grown out of that clumsy phase Bells?” Rose teased as I heard her walk to a chair that would thankfully still leave the bed in between me and Rose.
“Um, yeah.” I said, not knowing what else I could say. I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to say it. Which was odd because I had never had problems talking with Rose in the past.
“How bad is your hangover?” Rose asked as she started to put lotion on her legs; something I knew she did after every shower or bath. “There is no way you don’t have one right now.” She teased and I’m sure she had a teasing smirk on her face.
“Um, it’s not that bad.” I lied as I looked at my clothes and tried to figure out a way I could reach them while not letting Rose get a free show.
“Well, I have Tylenol in my purse if you want some.” Rose kindly offered as she continued to put lotion on herself.
“Um, sure.” I answered, not really paying attention to the conversation.
My shirt was just close enough to me that I could reach it and then I would put it on. Then with my shirt on, I could grab my other clothes that had fallen farther up the bed and not give Rose a show. I reached my left hand out and was just about to grab my shirt when something on my hand caught my attention. I was never one to wear jewelry, so the fact I was wearing something was strange. Looking closer at it, I felt my heart rate pick up speed as I realized what it was. I plopped back down on the floor and stared at the gold ring on my left ring finger.
No way. There’s no way.
The first thought that came to me was that I had drunkenly married Edward. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t surprise me. Edward had been pushing for us to get married recently but I kept saying I wanted to finish my bachelors’ degree, possibly going straight into getting my masters, before I even thought about getting married. He didn’t want to wait. He didn’t see the point in waiting when we were so sure that we would end up happily married someday. But I wanted to get all my schooling done and get set in my career before I settled down and got married. I knew once we were married he would want to start a family and I didn’t want that. At least not right away. I wanted to get a good handle on my career before I even thought about starting a family. So I kept pushing off getting married or anything related to it.
I should have expected he would get us drunk enough and then get us married so it was done and his plan to becoming the perfect family with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence would be under way. I was more than willing, and even happily so, to yell at him for hours about marrying me while we’re drunk. I was even okay with ignoring the fact he was probably just as drunk as I was. At least I wanted to yell at him but I was confused about something. If I had just married him, wouldn’t we be in our own room? Why would I be in Rose’s room?
“Um, Rose?” I hesitantly asked. “Do you know why I, um, have this?” I asked as I carefully sat up on my knees to show Rose my finger that had the ring on it. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t just take it off and toss it at her for her to easier, especially since I knew how Rose was about jewelry. She liked to inspect jewelry, meaning I predicted she would want to come over to me and look closer at the ring. But she didn’t and that didn’t help my confusion.
Rose put her lotion down and gave me her full attention. Rose had always been a very serious woman. Even growing up, she was always the one getting us out of trouble while it always seemed I was getting us in trouble. But she never once seemed to mind. We worked really well that way, that’s why we were practically instant best friends. I got us in trouble and she got us out of it. Now that we’re grown up, I didn’t get us in trouble anymore but Rose still protected me. She never really grew out of that protection streak she had as a kid.
“Well, what do you think it is?” She carefully asked as she stood from her chair and walked over to the nightstand that was on the opposite side of me and sat down on the side of the bed.
I moved as close to the bed as I could to make sure Rose wouldn’t be able to see anything from her higher position. She may be my best friend and we were really close, but we were never that close. I wasn’t looking to change that anytime soon.
“I don’t know Rose.” I said with an annoyed sigh. Rose’s raised eyebrow showed she didn’t believe me and that she wanted to hear what I really thought. “It looks like a wedding ring. But if I married Edward, wouldn’t I be in our room. Not yours?”
She looked nervous but I knew that couldn’t right. Rosalie Lillian Hale was never nervous. She was never unsure of herself. She was the most conceited and confident person I knew. Seeing Rosalie looking doubtful made me feel nervous. If she was nervous about what she was going to say, what I would I feel after she said it?
“Well, why don’t we start from the beginning?” Rosalie asked and then continued talking when I nodded my head in agreement. “What is the last thing you remember from last night?” I was hoping, since she asked that, that it meant she remembered last night because I definitely didn’t. At least I didn’t remember anything that would have lead up to me getting married.
“I remember us deciding to go out and have fun on our last night here.” I answered right away. We weren’t scheduled to leave for the airport until later. We had picked a late afternoon flight so that after the two and a half hour flight, we would eventually get home early evening.
“Okay, so you don’t remember anything.” Rosalie said. She then straightened her posture on the bed, as if she had decided to face something head on. Her determined face made me nervous that what she was about to tell me, I wouldn’t like. Rosalie was a stubborn person who always went after what she wanted with a force to be reckoned with. The look she had on her face told me that had just came to a decision that she wasn’t going to back down from. She wasn’t helping my nerves. “We went bar hoping. We went to several bars all within walking distance of the hotel so all of us could drink.”
“You remember what happened?” I asked. Rosalie could definitely hold her liquor much better than I could. I was sure she could because, as she would say, she’s a Hale and of course she wouldn’t get wasted. Being blacked out drunk was beneath a Hale.
“Yes.” Rosalie answered. “Mostly at least.” She admitted and then quickly changed topics to the one I wanted to watch. “Towards the end of the night, Edward proposed.”
I knew it! I knew he proposed. That’s the only reason why I would have a ring on my finger. But, that didn’t explain why I wasn’t with him when I woke up. I still didn’t understand how I was in Rosalie’s room and not ours.
“Okay.” I said, momentarily eyeing my ring before turning my attention back to Rosalie.
“You almost said yes.” That couldn’t be good. The only reason I would have a ring on is because I’m married. I don’t ever wear jewelry and I had always known that an engagement ring, or wedding ring, would be the only exception. If I almost said yes and didn’t actually said yes, why did I have the ring? “But I didn’t want you to marry him. So, I convinced you to marry me instead.”
“Excuse me?” I couldn’t believe what I heard. It was impossible. I could not be married to my best friend. There was no way.
“You’re my wife Bella.” Rosalie said with a wide smile that was the complete opposite of the look on my face and how I felt. The face she had, the emotions she was showcasing were even very different from the ones she had shown just a few moments ago. But there were more important things to think about other than the fact Rosalie looked happy instead of nervous.
“No I’m not.” I automatically said. There was no way I could be her wife. I knew same-sex couples were recently allowed to be married within the last few year in Vegas, and in in most of the states with all the same rights, but there was no way I married my best friend.
Rosalie held up her left hand and on her ring finger there was a matching gold band.
“Yes we are.” Rosalie said in a stern voice.
“But, why?”
There were so many things I wanted to know. I wanted to know how it came to be that Edward had proposed to me and then I married Rosalie. I already knew Rosalie would have been against me and Edward getting married because she had never liked Edward. I wanted to know how it went from Rosalie arguing against Edward marrying me to her marrying me. And then I wanted to know why Alice, Jasper or even Emmett hadn’t stopped us from getting married. I already knew why I did it: I was drunk. So drunk that I couldn’t remember anything the next morning. I shouldn’t have been allowed to make decision. But most importantly, I wanted to know why Rosalie wanted to marry me. I didn’t get why she would have gone along with it. We were best friends. She had lines of boys waiting to go out with her but she hadn’t wanted to until she graduated and was settled in her career; just like I hadn’t wanted to wait to marry Edward.
“Why do you think Bella?” Rosalie snapped in annoyance. She quickly closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Once she seemed to calm herself down, she opened her eyes and started talking. “I didn’t want you to marry Edward. So I let you know you had better options and when you doubted me, I decided actions spoke louder than words.”
“Wait, we got married because you didn’t want me to marry Edward and thought I could do better than your brother?” I asked. I knew she didn’t like Edward, but to marry me to keep me from marrying Edward was ridiculous. I could see Edward doing something like that, but not Rosalie. She didn’t do last minute things too well. She always had to plan everything and have complete control. This wasn’t her style.
“Of course I thought you could do better than that stupid, immature boy; whom I love on occasion.” Rosalie all but hissed. “Clearly you can do better because you married me.” She said with a haughty tone and a smirk.
“Rosalie, this isn’t funny.” I said getting angry. I nearly stood up but stopped when I saw her eyes dip down to my chest that was nearly revealed. I felt my face go red as I sat back down. “We need to get this taken back, or annulled or whatever it’s called. We can’t go home married.” I said, panic starting to leak into my voice.
“We’re not getting it annulled.” Rosalie said with a pointed look that made me feel like a kid getting scolded. “You know very well that I do not believe in getting divorced. I always knew once I was married, it was for life.”
“But you never thought you would get drunkenly married to your best friend!” I yelled, getting angry about the situation and about how unaffected she appeared to be. “You never wanted that.”
“I can’t believe how dense my wife is.” Rosalie said with an annoyed look.
“I’m not your wife Rosalie.” I quickly retorted. “I’m your best friend. There’s a difference.”
“That’s how a lot of marriages start off Bella.” Rosalie said in an almost belittling tone that had me glaring at her. “Couples start as best friends and then get married.”
“When they’re not drunk enough to not remember anything.”
“I remember everything Bella.” Rosalie said with a smirk. “I can’t help it that you can’t hold your liquor as well as I can.”
It was my time to close my eyes and take several deep breaths. The conversation was going nowhere and Rosalie was really starting to annoy me. She seemed so nonchalant about the whole thing. As if waking up married to your best friend was a normal occurrence.
“We need to get this annulled.” I said reiterated in a tense voice.
“I don’t want to get our marriage annulled, Bella.” Rosalie said in a stern voice, drawing me into opening my eyes again and to give her my undivided attention.
“Why wouldn’t you want to get it annulled?”
“Because I have no reason to.” Rosalie said as she crossed one leg over the other. She crossed her arms across her chest and looked prepared for an argument. I didn’t like that look; not with this conversation. Especially since I rarely won our arguments.
“No reason?” I yelled. “Rose, we can’t be married. We’re just friends.”
“No we’re not. Right now, we’re wives.” Rosalie said as she raised her left hand to show off the ring she had on her finger. “And I see no reason to get it annulled. I quite like who I’m married to.”
“As a friend! You like me as a friend. Just like you always have.” I felt my mouth hang out open as I prepared myself to keep yelling at Rosalie because I couldn’t stay married to her. I had a boyfriend who I was actually planning on marrying. Eventually. I was planning on eventually marrying him.
Rosalie didn’t say anything. Instead she stood up and started to walk over to my side of the bed. At first I thought she was just going to sit closer to me while we talked; I didn’t know why she would do that but that was what I first thought. When she kept walking, my eyes grew wide as I realized that she was going to get more than close enough to see me naked. I scrambled to get a sheet untangled enough to cover me while she talked.
“You don’t know what I’ve always felt because you, and I suppose your ex-boyfriend, are the densest human beings I have ever met.” Rosalie said as rounded the corner of the bed so that she was on the same side as I was. To my horror, she kept walking closer. “I suppose it was my fault since my actions could rival Alice’s. Except, you should have realized that I always treated you differently than all my other friends.”
I knew what she was talking about. Alice was a very friendly, no care about personal bubbles, type person. She constantly hugged everyone, looped arms with her friends and was just overall a very touchy-feely type of woman. Which was fine. It worked for her. But Rosalie, she was practically the exact opposite of Alice. Except when it came to me. She constantly looped her arm through mine, sometimes even holding my hand. She even always cuddled with me when we watched movies together. I had naively thought it was just a friend thing. It was something Alice would do with everyone else and I never made the connection Rosalie never did those kind of things with anyone else. Thinking back about it, I really should have known Rosalie didn’t treat anyone the same way she did me. Even her brief relationship with Emmett, someone who didn’t mind cuddling and the like, Rosalie wasn’t as touchy-feely with him as she was with me; even when they were together. That should have been a clue.
“But, you’ve had boyfriends.” I nervously said as Rosalie crouched down in front of me. I was very thankful I had just barely managed to wrap the sheet around me before she could see me, so she wasn’t able to see anything.
“Boyfriends of convenience.” Rosalie said as she kneeled next to me and gently cupped my cheek. Her thumb started to stroke my cheek and I could feel my face heat up because of it. “I’ve liked you for a long time Bella. Last night gave me an opportunity to take what I’ve wanted. So I took it.”
“But I didn’t want it.” I said. I could feel my heartbeat pick up speed as Rosalie leaned in closer to me. She placed her other hand on the ground in support as she leaned closer to me. She wasn’t close enough to touch but she was definitely more than close enough to make me nervous.
“At the time you did Bella.” Rosalie said with a small smile. “I didn’t force you to do anything.”
“I was drunk at the time Rose. I wasn’t of a right mind to get married. We need to get it annulled.” I said as I leaned back as far as I could, which wasn’t much, so I could try to clear my head by putting distance between the two of us.
“You don’t get it Bella.” Rosalie said with a shake of her head. “I don’t want it annulled. I will not do anything to help you in that process. Like I told you earlier, I only wanted to get married once in my life and I had been hoping to marry you for a few years now Bella.”
“But Rose, you don’t love me.” I weakly said, grasping at anything to try and get Rosalie to start thinking straight. I mean, she had always been closer to me than anyone else but I just figured that was because we were best friends.
“I’ve always loved you Bella.” Rosalie said as she leaned further into me and then leaned her forehead against mine. I was momentarily afraid she was going to try and kiss me. I nearly sighed in relief when she only leaned her forehead against mine. “I’m sure you, at the very least, have strong feelings. I’m sure, especially given we’re wives now, that I can work with those feelings to grow them.”
“But, I’m in love with Edward.” I weakly argued. We both knew that, even though I really liked him and saw myself possibly marrying him in the future, I didn’t really love him.
“Not for long Bella.” Rosalie said as she pulled back and gave me a devious smile. “I’ll make you love me in no time.”
I gulped at what could have only been a promise from Rose. She was the type of woman to go at anything she did one hundred percent and would never stop until she won. I was predicting I would be in for a very hectic future and that Rosalie was going to do everything in her power to insert herself even further into my life. I wasn’t sure how much more she could as we were already sharing an apartment together and went to the same college. But Rosalie would find a way to be an even bigger presence in my life and I wasn’t sure how I thought about it. But I was sure that for the next few months, things were going to be intense in mine and Rosalie’s apartment.
