He smiled wider, showing off his white teeth to everyone within a fifteen-mile radius. Had his teeth always been that annoyingly white or was she just now noticing? His voice too sounded condescending. Did he always talk to her like that?
“Your family should be here to witness this.” He let go of her and pulled a small, black box from his jacket pocket.
Fear shot up her spine, sending a nauseating swirl to her stomach. Maybe puking would be better than what was about to happen. She saw it, could picture it, like a train wreck. A train wreck in slo-mo.
This would not end well.
Dropping on one knee, surrounded by her family, Leo—and now a large group of wedding guests full of extended family and friends and even her childhood pediatrician—Harrison opened the box. He uttered the words Isabella had dreamed of hearing. Only now, it felt more like a nightmare.
“Isabella Anne Whitley, will you make me the happiest guy on earth and marry me?”
With the diamond ring glimmering in the box, his smile stretched out on his face, and with all her family as witnesses, she froze. Her mind, her body—it was as if she’d become paralyzed.
She caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. Leo—backing up before turning and taking off in the opposite direction.
“Well, would you look at that, she’s speechless. That’s new?” Harrison teased.
But it didn’t feel like teasing to her.
“C’mon, honey, we’re all waiting for your answer.” He looked at her expectantly.
Her family stared with similar expressions, but all she felt like doing was running—running far away from all of this. It felt as if she’d waited years for Harrison to ask her to marry him. And now that he had, she wanted him to take the question back, to somehow undo the last few minutes.
Tears stung her eyes and worked their way up her throat. She didn’t want to hurt him. But she didn’t want to hurt Leo either. So she did what anyone would do in her situation.
She stalled.
With almost her entire family, including Nana and Papa, as spectators, she saw only one way out. She’d seen it in movies over a dozen times. How hard could it be? She forced her expression to go still, deadpan, rolled her eyes way up in her head and…
Collapsed.
The crowd shrieked. The fall hurt more than Isabella anticipated. But to make it look believable, she had to let her body drop without trying to catch it—easier said than done.
Within seconds, her family surrounded her head with Harrison at the forefront. He caressed her face and while he, along with the rest of her family called her name, she fluttered her eyes open.
Isabella rested the back of her hand against her forehead, tried to push herself up to a sitting position, and made her voice sound groggy. “What…what happened?”
“Well, sweetie, you fainted,” Dad said, rubbing her shoulder.
“I did?” She looked at Harrison, hoping to catch a glimpse of belief there.
“Are you alright?” He took hold of her hands.
“I think so.”
“Izzy, sweetie, you want some water?” Mom asked.
“Sure, that would be great, Mom.”
“She’s so surprised over my proposal, she fainted,” Harrison called over his shoulder to the crowd, chuckling.
Finn squeezed in between Mom and Dad and held up three fingers. “Izzy, how many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three.” She wanted to reply with a smart aleck remark. Like, is this how doctors check to make sure patients are okay? By holding up fingers? Any idiot could do that without nearly a decade of college under their belt and a degree.
“And how’s your head?” Finn felt the back of her skull, but if she’d known better, he was messing up her hair on purpose.
She swatted his hand away. “It’s fine.”
