The Hockey Player Faked Loving Me, So I Chose His Rival novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fifty-Dollar Chapel
The immigration officer looked at me over her glasses and closed the folder with two fingers.
"Mrs. Mercer, there's a problem with your marriage certificate."
I smiled, because I'd been smiling in offices like this for three years.
"Tell me what it is. My husband will be here in ten minutes, he's coming from practice."
She didn't smile back.
"The Las Vegas chapel where you got married didn't have a license to officiate. The man who married you was an actor."
I sat still, my purse on my lap.
"The certificate was never registered with the county," she continued. "What you signed cost fifty dollars and has no legal validity."
I felt the air conditioning crawl down the back of my neck.
"That's a mistake," I said. "We did the paperwork. I have the photos, the rings, a video."
"A video of a fake wedding doesn't make it real, ma'am."
She opened another folder and turned the screen toward me.
"And there's something else. Your husband is already married."
I stared at the screen without understanding the words.
"Dalton Mercer was married six years ago in Reno, Nevada. To an Odessa Fairweather. That marriage is registered and still in effect."
Odessa.
His agent.
The woman who'd helped me pick out my dress.
The woman who cried at our "wedding" and hugged me, saying I was the sister she never had.
"No," I said. My voice came out small.
"Dr. Eliason, you entered this country on a work visa that your husband promised to sponsor through this process. Without the marriage, that sponsorship doesn't exist."
Dr. Eliason.
Nobody called me that in that house anymore.
To the team, I was Dalton's wife, the one who carried the bag with the bandages.
To Dalton, I was the woman who left honey tea by his bed.
The office doors opened behind me.
I recognized the footsteps before I turned.
Expensive shoes, long stride, a little shorter on the left side.
I'd been listening to that limp for three years, and I counted the steps without realizing it.
Dalton walked in with his Glaciers cap in his hand and that magazine-cover smile.
"Babe, sorry, the coach wouldn't let me go. Are you done already?"
Behind him came Odessa, in her gray suit and heels, talking on the phone.
She hung up when she saw my face.
Nobody said anything.
The officer took off her glasses.
"Mr. Mercer. We were discussing your Las Vegas certificate."
I waited.
I waited for Dalton to frown, to say there was a mistake, to ask what they were talking about.
I waited for my husband to look at me with the shock of a man whose floor had just been ripped out from under him.
Dalton just looked at Odessa.
It was a short look. A look between accomplices.
Then he ran a hand through his hair and sighed like someone late to a boring meeting.
"Thora," he said. "Let's talk in the car."
It wasn't a question.
It wasn't an apology.
It was the voice he used with referees when they called a penalty he'd actually committed.
And then I understood it all.
There was nothing to explain, because he already knew.
He'd known in Las Vegas, with my hand in his and the brass ring we'd bought at the corner store.
He'd known every morning when he kissed my forehead before heading to the ice.
He'd known every night when I massaged his knee until two in the morning.
"You knew," I said.
"Thora, don't make a scene here."
"You knew from day one."
Odessa stepped forward with her hands clasped, like she was about to pray.
"We can fix this, sweetheart. There are ways. Dalton and I have always had your best interests at heart."
I stood up.
I pulled the ring off my finger; it resisted a little from the sweat.
I set it on the officer's desk, next to the folder, with a small clink of metal.
"Officer," I said, "I want it on record that I was deceived."
"Thora," Dalton said, no longer smiling.
I looked at him for the first time since he'd walked in.
He was a handsome man, thirty-three, with the poster-blue eyes.
And he owned a knee I'd kept standing through three winters without anyone ever thanking me for it.
I walked past him without touching him.
"Your treatment paperwork is in my briefcase," I told him. "You're going to need it."
He let out a short laugh.
"You're upset. We'll talk at home."
That's what he said.
I grabbed my purse and walked out down the hallway, my heart slamming against my ribs.
Behind me, I heard Odessa's voice, low and quick.
"He has to sign the Linus paperwork before Monday."
I stopped with my hand on the door.
Who was Linus?
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