The Biker Who Married Me Without Asking novel · Chapter 10 of 48

Chapter 10: Reno

Willa's POV

Cade didn't answer right away, and I let the silence sit between us on the workbench.

Behind him a kettle ticked as it cooled.

"I'll tell you," he said. "All of it. I need you to sit."

"I'll stand."

"Then I'll stand too."

He put both hands on the bench.

"Four years ago I went to Reno to bury my brother's ashes in a lake," he said. "I did it at dusk, alone. Afterward I walked around until midnight because I couldn't go back to the motel."

"Okay."

"There was a chapel with a neon sign. It was the only thing open on the street."

I felt cold start at the back of my neck.

"I went in to sit down," he said. "There was a bride in there, with a dollar-store veil and a bottle of champagne, and she was crying so hard she couldn't breathe."

"That was me."

"That was you. You had a bachelorette group outside who'd lost you, and you were drunk. Your grandmother had died the week before."

I stared at him.

"You looked up at me," he said, "and you said, You look like somebody who'd say yes. And then you asked me to marry you."

"I did not."

"You said it was a dare. You said you wanted one night when somebody said yes to you instead of leaving."

The room tilted slightly.

I remembered a veil, and a taste of cheap champagne, and nothing else.

"I should have walked out," Cade said. "I was thirty and sober and I knew better. I didn't. The man in the chapel was a hundred years old and he'd have married a lamppost for forty dollars. He signed. I signed. You went to the bathroom before it was your turn."

"And I never came back to sign."

"You came back and you fell asleep in a diner booth with your head on my arm. I sat there until dawn. I went up to pay, and when I turned around you were gone."

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