Chapter 4
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 whatever assets I 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 wait until 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 to marry him—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 of hello.
“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.”
“I do.”
“Do you also go to church?”
My stomach drops. He had a Bible verse in his Instagram bio, something from Philippians I didn’t bother to look up. “Not really. Christmas and Easter only.” And those I liked mostly for the food and singing and getting to hang out with various people.
“Good.” But he doesn’t elaborate.
“You know,” I say, “I could be after you for your money.”
He shrugs. “I’m asking you to be after me for my money. Look, I need someone who’ll do all the team wife-and-girlfriend stuff and make me look good to the press. The rest is pretty much—” He makes a whatever gesture. “Up to you.”
Which sounds less like a wife and more like a job description. “What do I get in return?”
For some reason, that makes Brayden laugh.
“Why are you laughing?” I ask.
“Because that’s not a no.”
“It isn’t a yes either.”
He studies me across the shining surface of the table. “What do you need?”
“Tuition. Everything involved with going to school, really—books, fees, whatever—for the next two years until I have my degree.”
“Done.”
“Aren’t you gonna ask how much that is?”
Brayden raises his eyebrows and takes another large sip. “No. What else?”
“Health insurance. I take medication for a chronic condition.”
He peers at me like he’s expecting to see something obvious that he somehow missed.
“It’s manageable,” I say. Not that I’m currently managing it.
“All right…” As if he doesn’t quite believe me.
“And living expenses between now and when I move to Atlanta.”
That gets his smile—that same sharp-toothed one from last night.
“What?” I ask.
“You said when, not if.” He tosses back the rest of his drink. “There is one more thing.”
Here’s the catch. “What’s that?” I ask warily.
“We’re getting married.”
“I haven’t said yes yet.”
“But you’re going to. That means…” He looks around like he’s searching for the right words. “Forsaking all others.” He drops his voice. “So you can’t sleep with anyone else.”
The else makes me stop. What exactly is this arrangement about? “I’m not sleeping with you, either.”
He blinks. “Yeah, I figured.”
What about you? I want to ask. Is he also forsaking all others? But my father taught me never to ask a question you don’t want the answer to. Brayden can do whatever he wants. I’m trading being locked up in one tower for another. “So do we have a deal?” I say instead.
Brayden grins, his smile not quite reaching his eyes.
“That all works for me.” He extends a hand and then thinks better of it.
He climbs out of the booth, moves to the middle of the floor like he’s trying to attract the attention of the crowd.
More people look over—he’s a few inches taller than I am, moves with a kind of cocky arrogance that reads You should know who I am.
From the way people at the bar are staring at him, they clearly do.
“What are you—” I start to say, then cut myself off when he drops to one knee. Oh no. Oh no.
“Savannah,” he says, loud, clearly for other people’s ears. “I know we haven’t known each other for that long.”
I try not to snort.
“But as someone recently told me, when you know, you know. And I know that I can’t go one more day without you.” He blinks up at me, gray eyes hard. “What I’m asking is—will you do me the honor of being my wife?”