Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Like a song you used to love that now just makes you tired.
What the hell is he doing here?
I want to resist the urge to go downstairs and confront him—I want to stay up here in the quiet of my sanctuary and let Cash deal with it, let the ranch deal with it, let the whole enormous and implacable machinery of Ashby land absorb Marcus White Jr. the way it absorbs everything else that doesn't belong here—but there is really no chance of that happening and I know it.
I'm up and out of bed before the thought finishes itself, draggin' last night's jeans up my legs and still pullin' the hoodie down over my head when I step out into the hallway that overlooks the foyer, one hand catching the railing and the other still fighting with a sleeve.
Marcus is not inside the house. He's on the porch, like he means to force his way in here, arguing with Cash, and to my surprise—Wyatt too.
He's here to intimidate me. That's what he does when the world stops arranging itself around him—he coerces it back into order.
He's left several messages over the last week. Threats dressed up in the careful language of a man who majored in legalese and knows exactly which words leave no fingerprints.
My Instagram confession sent him into a spiral that reached low orbit. Not even his father's handlers can talk him down from this rage now.
But there's nothing he can do about it.
What's done is done, and we are over.
Once a thing lives on the internet it's no longer yours to negotiate with.
It's simply… true.
All the way down the stairs I'm thinkin'… rage, Savannah. Rage like the spring wind across the badlands. Pull out that vocabulary of yours, put all that elite education to good use, and tell him off in a way he will never forget.
But there's another way to handle this too.
And that's the response I choose just before I open the door and face him.
"Marcus," I say, my voice just as soft as my smile. "What brings you by?"
He's speechless for a moment. I've interrupted whatever lawyerly argument he was making and so his mouth just… gapes. Then he makes this weird noise like a gasp, or a croak, or a cough, and unleashes on me in a way that makes me feel both content and in control at the same time.
"What brings me by? What. Brings. Me. By? You little schemer. You little tramp. You think you've won, but you have no idea what kind of contract I had with your mother. You owe me." He's looking at Cash now. "You owe me everything and you know it. You know what that contract says."
This is all very disturbing and I've been doing my very best to ignore the fact that my mother sold me to a man without even a hint that this was even a thing. I get it. She didn't want me to marry Legion. But what kind of woman puts that in a will with conditions like 'you will lose everything and your descendants will rot in poverty for all eternity if you do not marry respectable.’
I'm being hyperbolic, obviously. But only a little.
"Marcus, may I have a word with you, please?"
I don't wait for an answer. Just push past him and my brothers, and walk barefoot out into the driveway.
He follows me—huffing, and moaning, and complaining the whole way. "I cannot believe you put that online. I cannot believe you embarrassed me like that."
It's always about him.
I walk right up to his BMW and turn at the driver's side door.
Because this isn't a conversation, it's a good old-fashioned dismissal.
I lean back against the car, fold my arms, and just look at him.
Let him finish.
"—do you understand what this does to my campaign? Do you have any idea—"
"Marcus."
Quiet. Easy. Like callin' a dog off a porch.
He stops.
"You drove four hours to stand on my family's porch and call me a tramp in front of my brothers." I smile at him. It's a good smile. I've been practicing it all my life. "And I want you to notice that Cash is still standing up there. And Wyatt. And neither one of them came down here to help me. And do you know why, Marcus? Because they know I don't need their help."
He opens his mouth.
I keep going.
"You want to talk about that contract?" I tilt my head just a little. "The one where you had to buy me through a dead woman's will because you could not get me to stay on your own merits? That contract? You want to stand in my driveway, in front of my brothers, and tell me I owe you?” I let that word sit between us like something rotten. "Sweetheart, the fact that you needed paperwork should have been your first clue."