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Her lashes wavered uncertainly. Then she stiffened her spine. “This isn’t happening. End of story.”
Staring her straight in the eyes, I leaned in and murmured, “I bet you ten bucks you’re going to be Chloe Hamilton by the end of this year.”
“Ooh, ten bucks,” she repeated sarcastically, waving her hands and rolling her eyes. “You must besosure you’re going to succeed.”
“Fine. Tenthousand,” I immediately revised, not batting an eyelash.
She sighed, exhausted with me. “You are just so—”
I grinned and lifted a finger, taunting her. “Watch what you call me, honey. Becauseyou’rethe one who’s going to marry me. And what will that make you?”
“Wow,” she whispered, gaping at me as if she just couldn’t believe my immaturity. Then she pushed past me, shaking her head incredulously.
“I’m done talking about this,” she announced, lifting her hands and starting down the hall toward the kitchen, only to stop and whirl back. “Just seriously…” But she must not have had any more good arguments left in her. Or she decided it was useless to argue with someone she considered a fool.
That was probably more likely.
So she groaned, “Dear God,” and turned away again, walking off as if she wasn’t going to come back this time.
So I called after her. “I might not win you over today, but I am going to win you over. You just wait and see.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” she countered over her shoulder.
“Thank you!” I grinned. “I’ll take all the help I can get.”
“You’re an idiot,” her voice trailed back from the front of the house.
“Maybe,” I shouted. “But I’myouridiot now.”
19CHLOE
If my phone wasn’t currently in my bedroom, charging, I would’ve called my father right then and rained utter hell down on him.
I mean, what had he been thinking?
He had just ruined everything. Nothing between Luke and me was ever going to be normal again. And Dad needed to pay for orchestrating that.
But his punishment would have to wait.
For now, I had a man who didn’t want me but was determined to marry me in my bedroom, and I had no idea what to do about him. The fact that I used to daydream about this very thing from this very person made it all even more traumatic.
Slipping into the back bathroom on the opposite end of my house as my bedroom, I quietly shut the door at my back and then sat on the closed seat of my toilet so I could grip my head between my hands and rest my elbows on my knees.
The tears came freely, sluicing down my cheeks in rivers, and I let myself have a good, long cry.
Because the problem with all this was that while Luke might have his issues—namely crude, inappropriate, clueless immaturity—he was still a good man. His parents were two of the sweetest, most dependable, loyal people I’d ever met. And Luke might think he was nothing like them. He was loud where they were quiet. He had always needed to move, while they could just sit…peacefully. He needed more of an active, trade-type occupation, and they were more cerebral and academic. But he was still like them when it came to his basic morality. And he would obediently stay with me from this point on. No matter what.
Which would get to me. It was among the many reasons I’d fallen for him all those years ago, to begin with. And it was going to make this even harder for me to discourage him now.
Because now I was going to be fighting myselfandhim.
But if I didn’t fight, it was going to break me. It was going to break me as I’d never been broken before. I just knew it.
And so, I had to resist everything he threw at me.
I probably wasted half an hour’s worth of time, sitting in that bathroom, trying to steel my resolve against whatever wooing came next.
Luke gave me all the time I needed, not coming to find me or barging in, to demand…well, anything. It was all part of his plan, I swear.Give her time and space. To hang herself. And his consideration was working, dammit.
