Pushing the Boundaries (Picking up the Pieces #3) (4 page)

At that, all I could do was let out an enraged screech and storm off past everyone in the direction of the buffet. I needed coffee, bacon, pancakes, and an attorney. In that order.

The rest of the weekend in Vegas was nothing but a barrage of phone calls from my family—some of them informing me I landed a ten and that I better not do anything to eff it up, some of them questioning if I’d gone out of my ever-loving mind—and avoiding my
loving husband
like the plague. It was either avoid him or murder him. And I wasn’t fond of the idea of jail time. So his ass spent our last night in Vegas sleeping on the couch of our fancy honeymoon suite.

Turns out, even though everyone was drunk—with the exception of a pregnant Emmy, who did
nothing
to stop the nuptials—all of my friends were still right-minded enough to know that Trevor and me getting hitched was a horrible idea. But instead of doing something to stop it, every single one of them egged it on. Apparently, when we were at the club, I started going on about how I wanted someone who looked at me the way Luke and Jeremy looked at Savannah and Emmy, and how I wanted to get married more than anything in the world. When Trevor suggested I marry him, everybody—my drunk-as-shit self included—thought it was a brilliant idea!

Clearly, all of my friends were idiots and I needed to interview for replacements the minute I got home.

I’d threatened bodily harm against Brett if he switched places with Trevor on the return flight home, but that didn’t deter him one bit. With Brett having the window seat and me in the middle, Trevor conned the little old lady in the aisle seat next to me into changing, telling her we were newlyweds and the airline made an unfortunate mix-up and didn’t seat us together. Having been charmed beyond an inch of her life by his pretty blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, the old woman had been more than glad to trade seats with Trevor. And I hated her for it.

“So…” Trevor started once the plane had taken off. “I’m thinking I’ll ask Nana to make pot roast for our celebration dinner. She any good with a crock pot?”

Brett snorted from my other side and earned himself an elbow to the ribs.

“Don’t call her Nana. She’s not your Nana; she’s
my
Nana. And there isn’t going to be a celebration dinner.”

He gasped like he couldn’t believe what I was saying. “We’re married now, so that makes her
my
Nana, too. I love her.”

“You don’t know her!” I seethed.

“I know her here,” Trevor responded, putting a hand over his heart. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was an Air Marshal on our flight, because I was pretty sure I was fixing to stab him.

“Does she make a good chocolate cake? You know how much I love chocolate cake,” he continued after five minutes of silence.

“I want to kill you. You know that, right?”

“This is starting to feel like a real marriage!” Trevor bounced up and down in his seat like a boy who’d just gotten his very first porno mag.

I squeezed my eyes shut and laid my head back. “I hate you so hard right now,” I grumbled before letting the slight movement of the plane lull me into a much-needed nap.

Work had been exhausting. I’d had to push back a ton of appointments in order to take that extended weekend for Jeremy and Savannah’s Vegas wedding, so today had been brutal. Once my regulars found out I was back in town, they’d swarmed my nail salon like vultures. Elegant Nails had opened about five years ago, and the little shop was my pride and joy. While Cloverleaf was a smaller town, it wasn’t lacking in salons and day spas. But I’d been blessed that Elegant Nails was the most popular one in town. My girls knew their shit. It didn’t matter what you came in for: acrylic, manicure, pedicure, shellac, gel…we did it all. And not to sound braggy or anything, but we also did it the best. It was a guarantee that no one ever walked out of my salon unhappy with how their nails came out. Elegant Nails was a thriving shop in the middle of town that stayed packed from open to close. And I savored every single minute of it

But even though it wasn’t manual labor or anything, my days could still be exhausting. My back hurt from being hunched over clients’ hands. My ass was sore from sitting for over twelve hours, and my neck was killing me. It was time I really started to look over my expansion plans for the shop. I’d been wanting to build on for a while now, making rooms available for massages and waxing, but something had always come up to stall my plans. But at this point in time I’d have given my right boob for an onsite masseuse to work out the stiffness coiled tight through my entire body.

I reached back and tried to rub out the knot which had formed between my shoulder blades as I unlocked my front door and pushed it open. Going through my typical routine, I dropped my purse and keys on the table by the door and started for the kitchen as I pulled my shirt over my head. I needed a
huge
glass of wine and a bubble bath, STAT.

I was halfway down the hall, my arms in the air, shirt pulled over my head, when a deep voice stopped me in my tracks.

“Welcome home, wifey.”

I jerked my shirt down, trying desperately to cover up the sheer pink lace of my bra. But, as usual, the damn thing got stuck in my mass of curls, causing me to flail around like I was having a seizure before I managed to get it untangled from my hair and pulled back over my chest.

“Gotta say,
cher
: you strip for me every day, this marriage is gonna work out
great
!”

“Son of a bitch!” I yelped once I was fully covered. Turning to face my intruder, I ignored the blush I knew was covering me from cheek to chest, making my skin as red as my hair. “What the hell, Trevor?!”

“Now, is that any way to greet your hubby after a long day at work?” He dropped a box on the ground and put his hands on his hips before looking at me with that smile I would usually love if I hadn’t still been beyond pissed.

I had been married for all of forty-eight hours and I already wanted to kill my husband. And what I saw when I dragged my eyes from Trevor to the box he’d just dropped made those murderous fantasies I’d been having since Sunday come back full force.

“What the fuck is all this shit?” I asked as I waved my arms around. Boxes were piled up everywhere. “And what in the ever-loving hell is
that
!” I screeched, pointing at the offending navy-blue monstrosity sitting next to my beautiful, comfy sea-foam green living room set.

“
That
, my loving wife, would be my Barcalounger.”

“The one from your apartment?”

“Yep,” he responded, still wearing that stupid-ass grin.

“Can you explain why the hell it’s in
my
living room?”

“Don’t you mean
our
living room?”

My brain chose that moment to explode. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I moved in!” He threw his arms wide like he’d just announced the McRib was back and it was the best day ever.

“I’m sorry. What?” I repeated, because clearly this was a bad dream. I would wake up any moment and that ugly-ass chair wouldn’t be in my living room next to all my pretty things. Yep. It had to be a dream. I reached up and pinched my arm, hard.

“
Ow
! Shit!”

Nope, not a dream. I was in hell.

“The hell’d you do that for?” Trevor asked, looking at me like
I
was the crazy one.

Not bothering with a response, I walked over to my purse, pulled out my cell and dialed.

“‘Lo?” the voice on the other end answered.

“Luke?”

“You got me, babe. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to let you know I’ve gone temporarily insane and I’ll be killing your best friend now. It’s not premeditated. I’ve really lost my fucking mind.”

“Uh, sweetheart, I’m pretty sure you calling to give me the heads-up counts as premeditation.”

“No, nuh-uh. Not when I’m crazy, which obviously, I am right now. Because Trevor just announced he’s moved in. And all his ugly shit is currently co-mingling with all my pretty shit. And I pinched the hell out of my arm to prove it had to be a nightmare. But nope! It’s real! He’s currently standing here, smiling like an asshole with all his nasty crap scattered around my living room, getting his germs on everything! And now I have a goddamn bruise on my arm!” By the time I finished my little speech, I was nearly hyperventilating.

Yes, I was more than aware I was losing my shit, and fast. But anyone who knew Trevor knew his apartment was the seventh circle of Hell. It was a black hole where nice things went to die. Any time we were forced to visit his hovel, we had always been sure to bring those paper toilet seat covers with us, so as not to contract VD from sitting on his furniture. And now, his disgusting, syphilis-covered chair was sitting on
my
carpet next to
my
furniture and contaminating it!

Luke stayed silent for several seconds before saying, “When we showed up to help him move this morning, he said you already knew.”

“
You helped him
?” I shrieked into the phone.

“He said you were cool with it!”

I spun around to take in the rest of the room and yelled, “There’s a goddamned neon beer sign hanging on my wall!”

“It’s art,” Trevor explained, like that solved the problem.

I chose to ignore him. It was for his own good.

I got more silence on Luke’s end before he finally spoke up. “You know what? This phone call never happened. You got my word that if you claim temporary insanity when your murder case goes to trial, you’ll have my and Ben’s full support.”

“Wait. Ben helped move him in, too?!”

“What’s that, baby girl?” Luke shouted off into the distance. “Okay, Emmy; I’ll be right there. Listen, Lizzy, I gotta go. Em needs me.”

“Don’t you hang up on me! I know Emmy’s not even with you right now!” But my threats were pointless; he’d already hung up.

Closing my eyes, I breathed in deeply, and then counted to ten. I’d read somewhere once that counting to ten helped a person to calm down when they were under immense amounts of stress. Whoever wrote that article was full of shit.

After silently counting to sixty, I finally felt a bit calmer. That was, until I opened my eyes and saw Trevor’s stuff hadn’t miraculously disappeared over the span of a minute.

“This isn’t a frat house, Trevor,” I announced a little too loudly. “An actual grown-up lives here. Get this stuff out. Now!” Then I stomped past him into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of wine and stomped past him
again
, up the stairs and to the bathroom where I slammed the door as hard as I could.

I needed that bath more than ever. As the tub filled up with warm water and bubbles, I slipped out of my clothes and climbed in, resting against the back of the tub. Then I pulled the cork and slugged wine straight from the bottle.

Because I was classy like that.