Me: Then I was wondering…will you marry me?
Chapter Four
Savannah
April
Will you marry me?
The words stare back at me from my DM. I blink like the letters will somehow rearrange. Have I lost my mind?Has he?
Me: Do you just ask random girls to marry you all the time?
Brayden: You’re the first
He has to be messing with me. And yet, there’s a proposal sitting in my DMs. Another message from Brayden comes in.
Brayden: Not a real marriage obviously
Obviously.Obviously, because men like him aren’t interested in girls like me unless they can get something out of the relationship.
I always figured I’d end up marrying someone from my father’s country club: someone whose family also owns a conglomerate, someone who is interested in whateverassetsI can bring to the relationship. Right now, my only assets are half a set of vintage earrings, an empty pill bottle, and a lifetime of business instincts that I never thought I’d really need—all of which are telling me that if an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is.
I should leave the conversation. Untag myself from all the pictures. Possibly block him. I’ve had a hard enough week without some ballplayer playing head games.
Me: If it’s not a real marriage, then what is it?
Brayden doesn’t answer. He just sends a time: an hour from now. An address: a bar near the San Diego ballpark.
Brayden: Come find out.
I waituntil it’s twenty minutes before I’m supposed to meet Brayden, then do my makeup in a frantic rush. Go down to where I parked my Lexus, only to find a boot on the car and a note stuck under the windshield to call Mickey’s Repos.
I summon a rideshare instead, then call my dad. He doesn’t pick up.They took my car, I text him. No answer comes, which is itself an answer. However I deal with this whole situation, I’ll have to do it on my own.Including meeting a man I barely know who just proposed via DM.
It’s only ten minutes to the bar. I get out, go inside. A few people are milling around, most in San Diego baseball gear. One has an Atlanta Peaches jersey on. Right, there’s a game in a few hours. Brayden’s sitting at the bar, a glass in front of him that holds some kind of brown liquor.There’s a game in a few hours and you’re supposed to play in it.
When I walk up to him, he gives me another one of those once-overs, eyes starting at my calves and working up, past my hips and the curves of my belly, lingering at my chest, then onto my shoulders. Finally he looks me in the eye.
I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I’d been sitting down last night. Maybe he didn’t register how tall I was. Maybe he forgot I don’t look like every other girl he’s dated. I don’t even know if I want tomarryhim—the possibility seems absurd—but I didn’t come here to get turned down, either.
Go into a negotiation as if you’ve already won.I square my shoulders, toss my hair. Something in the motion makes him grin.
“Come on.” He grabs his glass from the bar, clutching it like he might need the courage. Or it’s possible he’s just still hungover. Either way, he leads me to a table at the back. Sits. Doesn’t ask if I want anything to drink.
“The team told me I need to get married,” he says, instead ofhello.
“The team told you?” So this isn’t about him or about me, really. This is about what he’s being ordered to do.
“Basically. I need to do something to help my image.” He takes a long sip of his drink.
Clearly giving up day drinking a few hours before a game—in a bar with baseball fans, some of whom have definitely noticed he’s here from the way they’re pointing their cell phones at us—isn’t an option. “And that’s where I come in?” I ask.
He studies me again. “You seem like good wife material.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re—” He gestures to my face.“You want to go to school.”
