Cole woke in the most comfortable bed he had ever known. But he could not luxuriate in it because his head pounded like somebody was playing a bass too loud inside his skull. He never got this hungover because he never drank as much as he had last night. And he decided then and there that he never would again.

Then, he remembered the reason for his drunkenness. He married a client last night. A jolt of shock and panic rippled through him, making his body tense, his head hurt worse, and a groan spill out of his lips. It felt like his skull was about to snap off his spine, even though it rested securely on the pillows. He rolled around as the memories from the night before washed over him.

His miserable squirming rolled him right off the bed in a flail of limbs and blankets. He landed on his hip with a thud, and it hurt his head so bad he could cry. Instead, he braved the pain and the reality of the situation to open his eyes and look at where he had ended up.

He was on a rug that lay over a large expanse of gleaming hardwood. To his side was the bed from which he tumbled. Beneath it were a few storage tubs tucked away in neat rows. There was a bedside table with a lamp behind him and an armchair and dresser on the other side of the room. A few doors punctuated the cream-colored walls, likely leading to a closet, a bathroom, and the exit. He blinked blearily at them, then chose one at random, hoping it was the bathroom because he had to pee.

It was a task to untangle his legs from the covers, which ended up strewn halfway across the room in a trail as he struggled toward his chosen door. It was not the bathroom. It was an empty closet, the walk-in kind with custom shelves and clothing racks. He opened a drawer and found it to be as empty as the racks. Yet there was not a speck of dust when he dragged a finger across one of the shelves. Across from the door hung a mirror outlined in vanity lights that jabbed Cole’s eyeballs. He flicked the light off and backed away.

The next door he tried was the bathroom, about twice the size of the closet, with a sleek, white, modern design. Cole slammed the door shut, locked it, and then hurried over to the toilet. He washed his hands and dried them off on a towel that was hanging from the ring in some fancy folded formation like the ones in hotel rooms. Maybe he was in a hotel room? It didn’t seem like one, though.

He opened the drawers in the bathroom and found that they were just as desolate as the ones in the closet. It was obviously somewhere that Gideon had put him, so maybe an empty apartment? There was one more door leading out of the bedroom to check, but Cole needed a minute to lean against the counter, put his pounding head in his hands, and process.

Logan was going to kill him for getting into this mess. Then he remembered that Logan was the one to get him into the mess. So, he cursed Logan silently within the throbbing ache of his skull. He wished a headache upon Logan that was a thousand times worse than this one. At least he did not have to go back to the club, but Logan had been the devil he knew, and the unknown of this new situation frightened him.

He went through the events of last night one by one in his head and thought that his only saving grace was the fact that they were not legally married yet. Maybe he could still get out of this. Nobody in their right mind would hold him to bogus vows exchanged at gunpoint. It had practically been the stroke of midnight, which should have counted for something. Things that happened around midnight were not real, right?

Gideon seemed opposed to the whole thing. But last night's events were a rude reminder that, even though he had enjoyed those nights with the man, he was essentially a stranger. Gideon liked him well enough as a bedmate, enough to pay over 10k to get him for a few hours, which was already psychotic behavior, so maybe he would like to keep Cole at home in his bed the way James seemed to think he would.

But honestly, who was Cole kidding? Why the hell would someone like Gideon Barta want to marry someone like him? He was a jaded, washed-out stripper slash hooker at the ripe old age of twenty-two. Men like Gideon did not marry their whores. They married the daughters of wealthy conglomerate owners or had dramatic romances with the kids of the opposing crime syndicate. There was no need to marry hookers.

The messed-up thing was that Elijah and Alexis put this thought into his head that maybe Gideon could be his Prince Charming. Maybe not by marrying him, but by helping pay off his debt, either through nights like Valentine’s or in one lump sum, and then keeping him around as a side piece. But the universe was playing some sick cosmic joke and ruining even that small glimmer of hope by giving him the impossible - marriage to the man, except the man turned out to be a Barta of the highest order, the immediate family, and neither he nor Cole had wanted the union. Probably.

His head was all messed up, and he could not get his thoughts straight. He felt something drop onto his thigh and blinked down, only to realize his vision was blurry. Another tear fell from his chin and made a dark splotch on the light gray sweatpants. His eyes, his face, and his head hurt so bad that he did not even feel himself crying.

It hit him like a bowling ball to the gut that the clothes he wore, soft sweatpants and an overly large sweatshirt, were not his own, leaving him even more untethered than before. Empty, sterile bedroom, clean laundry-detergent, fresh clothes, and a completely unknown future when all he had known for the past seven years was the routine of going to the club and chipping away at his debt. He never even let himself dream of any type of after.

He wanted to curl up in the bathtub, hug his knees to his chest, and allow himself the luxury of feeling young and helpless. But he could not do that. He hastily wiped his cheeks, then almost slapped himself in the face when a knock on the door startled him.

“Nikki?”

Cole stared at the door. Did nobody know his real name? Nikki was a derivative of Nikolas, but still, it was what he used exclusively for stripping. Had he gotten married before God last night using his stripper name? He made eye contact with his reflection and shook his head.

“Nikki, hey, are you okay?” Gideon kept pounding on the door. “I just want to…oh.”

Cole swung the door open and glared. “That’s not my name.”

“Well,” Gideon rubbed the back of his neck, looking bashful, which was new. His eyes roamed over the tear tracks that Cole had only marginally wiped away. They snagged on Cole’s bruised cheek and then dropped to the ground. It was such a different look from the confident dominance or the roaring rage Cole had seen from him so far that he went cross-eyed, trying to reconcile the expression with the man wearing it. And trying to reconcile how casual and soft Gideon looked while dressed down in a soft shirt and pair of joggers.

“I know,” he said, “it's just that I wasn’t sure if…Nikki is the name you told me at the club, so…”

Cole gaped at him.

“Well, I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to know or use your real name.”

Cole’s grandmother would smack him across the back of the head and tell him he was going to catch flies if she were still alive to see him gawping like this.

Gideon held up a glass of water and a white pill bottle. “I brought some ibuprofen.”

That might actually help.

“Gideon,” Cole pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and held out the palm of his hand, “if that even is your real name. We are married. You may call me Cole.”

Cole felt two pills drop into his palm, and then when he left it hanging there in the air, he felt two more. He popped them all into his mouth and held his hand out again. The cool side of the glass pressed against it, and he gulped some water to help slosh the pills down.

“Well…” Gideon said but trailed off, maybe unwilling to bring up the elephant in the room. Instead, he said, “Gideon is my real name.”

Cole opened his eyes to squint at him. “As is Barta.”

“Yes.” Once again, Gideon looked bashful, which was far too much for Cole to handle until the pain meds kicked in.

“Did it really happen?” He asked anyway because he loved to torture himself.

“What do you remember?” Gideon asked warily. “You were really drunk.”

“Compliments of your brother. I remember everything until I threw up.” Cole waved his hands around as he spoke, sloshing water over his wrist because he forgot he was holding the glass. Gideon grabbed it out of his hand and held it away as if it were a live grenade.

“Well, we really got married…church married, at least.”

Cole sucked in a breath between his teeth, and Gideon’s head whipped toward him, eyes wide in his skull, looking for whatever had made him gasp. “Did they use my real name, at least?” he moaned. “The priest wasn’t calling me Nikki the whole time, right?”

“Well,” Gideon trailed off. Cole was beginning to learn that this meant there was something he did not want to say. The worst. The priest called him Nikki the whole time.

“Great.”

“What do you care about what the priest called you?” Gideon scoffed. “Do you go to church?”

“No, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, at least I know something about my husband, then.” Cole brushed past him into the room, trying for confidence and elegance but ending up plummeting face-first onto the bed with a groan. “We aren’t really married yet, though,” he mumbled into the blankets.

Gideon heard him perfectly because he came to sit beside him on the bed and responded with, “We will be in a couple of hours.”

Cole peered up at him through one eye. “Why can’t we just…not?”