Page 28 of Sucker For You

Chase

Sorry we couldn’t talk about my itinerary last night. You weren’t around for most of the party.

Chase

But I need you to call me back, babe. We have to talk about this. Once you’ve calmed down again, you’ll be glad you didn’t do something rash.

“You’ll be glad you didn’t—That’s not an apology!”

“Chase said he was sorry.”

“No, he said—”

Her ring knocked the screen. “I need to call him back. I—I need to fix this. I have to try—”

No.

A hot, visceral recoil punched through his gut.

She’d return Chase’s missed calls and accept the blame, when that man should be the one groveling. Knees, pleas, the whole fucking deal! But she’d do it, because Isabel thought she had to. When she shouldn’t need to make the damn call at all. Sheshouldn’t need to take bullshit from bullies like Dr. Chase Meyer Jr., who imagined that good looks, fancy degrees, and thick bank accounts gave them a license to misuse women, then treat them like they were stupid and overreacting when they dared to—not even complain, but just to speak.

Wes had dealt with bullies before. He’d fought for his siblings on the playground, and fought for himself, too. If they’d mocked him for his spelling grades and class read-alouds, if they’d mocked Erin for her glasses and her brainiac mastery of math and science, mocked Adrian for being a ten-year-old policy wonk with nightmares about the ozone layer, they’d never mocked his fists.

Detention had been worth it.

“Don’t—please don’t call him.”

“I don’t have a choice! I don’t know what else I can do.”

“I do. And youdohave a choice,” he told her.

“W-what choice?”

“Isabel Wright, marry me instead.”

6

She must not have heard him right through the numb, senseless noise rushing in her ears and churning under her ribcage. She couldn’t have. Otherwise, she’d have to accept that Wes was laughing at her, that he was pulling a cruel prank, goading her for an emotional reaction just like the children in the government and private homes had done—when she only wanted to be left alone.

“Cold fish!”they’d taunted.

But. . . he wasn’t laughing, was he? The crinkles beside his bleached eyelashes had faded. The smile that perpetually tugged up the left side of his mouth was gone. His gaze—dark as drowning, flecked with gold—was somber.

She hadn’t misheard him.

“W-what?”

“Marry me, Isabel.”

Yes, she’d heard him right. She still didn’t understand, though. She shook her head, her bitten nails burrowing into her palms. With that pain, a little sensation returned to her. She wished it hadn’t.

Marry me.

“No? You’re turning me down? I mean, that’s fine, but I don’t—”

“You weren’t serious. When you said. . .that. You weren’t. You can’t have been.”

“I was,” he countered. How could Wes be so steady, when she was dissolving into quicksand inside her own body? “I am.”