Chapter 4
“Sweetheart?”
Aunt Grace’s soft voice pulled me out of my spiral.
I blinked back to reality and looked at the two brothers again.
Logan glanced away the second our eyes met—like eye contact might accidentally get him picked.
Landon was subtler, but I saw it in the way his lashes dropped just a little too fast. A flicker of restraint, of discomfort.
It hit me square in the chest.
This engagement, this whole future—was nothing but a damn burden to them.
I swallowed hard, forcing down the lump in my throat. I turned to Aunt Grace, who was watching me with hopeful eyes.
“Grace…” I said, voice shaking just enough to betray the mess in my chest. “Can I… not choose either of them?”
She blinked. “Why?”
Then her gaze caught the war playing out behind my eyes, and her expression softened like she’d just figured it out.
“Oh, baby. Of course. I should’ve known this would be hard.”
“You three grew up like siblings. It’s not easy picking one over the other.”
She clapped her hands suddenly, fake bright. “Fine, we’ll leave it to fate!”
She turned to the butler. “Go grab the damn straws.”
Even now, even in this nightmare, Aunt Grace still played the role of the perfect stand-in mom. She made space for me to be scared. She tried to fix it all, like she always had.
But then—
“Bitch can’t make up her mind so she’s throwing Mommy Holt under the bus now?”
“No matter who draws the short stick, he’s gonna resent Holt Mommy forever.”
“And her mom wasn’t some saint either—playing the hero just to guilt-trip the Holts into taking her daughter? Pathetic.”
“She’s the reason the twins are stuck in this goddamn mess to begin with!”
They weren’t just coming for me now. They were dragging my dead mother through the mud.
And that? That was my fucking line.
