Coughlin appeared with an extra place setting and put it on the table next to me. What was happening?

“You’re about to be really sad that you put that cheap garbage on your hair,” Vanessa whispered at me, and I wondered what she knew that I didn’t.

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

“If your sister doesn’t want to pay for life’s necessities, it’s not something we need to concern ourselves with,” my mother sniffed. I decided not to tell her that visiting her hairstylist once a week was not an actual necessity.

Instead I was too caught up as to who would be joining us. A reporter? Was that why I was here? To sell my father’s image as a loving family man? Or were Frederica and my mother back on good terms? Some new business partner who needed to be impressed?

“Constance! So good to see you. Ronald, how are you, sir?”

As my mother stood up to greet her guest, I realized that it was so much worse than anything else I had considered.

It was Brad. Here. Kissing my mother hello.

I only barely registered Vanessa smirking at me as blood rushed through my ears, making it impossible to hear.

What was happening?

My mother told Brad to have a seat. Next to me. And she was smiling.

Suddenly, I knew. I knew what was going on.

I saw him reach inside his coat pocket as he approached me, confirming my worst fear. The lion had finally been set loose.

Bradford Beauregard Branson IV was going to propose to me.

CHAPTER SIX

How had I not recognized that this was a trap? That my mother had lured me here so that Brad could ask me to marry him in front of my family? The two of them had put me in a position where I couldn’t say no. Frederica had said they were all expecting an announcement any day now. Was it because she knew something I didn’t?

Something that felt akin to hate bubbled up inside my chest, pouring into the rest of my body like angry molten lava. I was so furious with them both that I didn’t know how to calm myself down.

Instead, I did the unthinkable. I was rude to a guest.

I stood up without excusing myself, throwing my napkin on the table. I headed toward the kitchen, the anger nipping at my heels with each step I took. How could they?

“Madison!” Brad calling my name only made me walk faster. I’d get someone on the staff to call Julio or I’d eat the cost of an Uber back to my apartment.

“Wait.” His voice was right behind me and then his hand was on my arm. I jerked it away.

“What do you want?” I growled.

“Just to talk to you for a minute. Please.”

My initial inclination was to tell him to go screw himself and walk away. But it warred with that teenage part of myself that had adored him. He stood there with that self-deprecating grin that I’d always loved and it was even harder to tell him no. It was like he knew exactly what to do to get me to agree.

I gave a curt nod and we walked into my father’s study. Brad closed the door behind us and I folded my arms across my chest. He stood there a minute, flustered, as if he didn’t know what to say. It was very unlike him.

Because Brad was his family’s metaphorical and literal golden boy. Tall, blond, soft-brown eyes. Toothpaste-commercial smile. Girls had fallen all over themselves for years.

It had always made me feel special that I was the one he chose. I got the title of girlfriend. I was the one on his arm. I had loved all the envious stares.

What I hadn’t loved was his inability to be faithful to me.

“So, uh, hi.”

Really? We hadn’t spoken in three months and he resorted to hi? I started for the door and he put both of his hands out.

“Wait. That was stupid. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . we haven’t talked in a while and I wasn’t sure what to say.”

When he stopped answering my texts, I had been so hurt and angry. I had wanted to pretend he didn’t exist. To just . . . forget about him.

Which was harder to do than I thought it would be. He was my first boyfriend. My first kiss. My first everything. Some part of me wanted so badly to believe that he had loved me the way that I had loved him. It was what made me give him chance after chance. Like I believed that if I were just patient and waited for him to stop being a moron, we really could end up happily ever after.

He rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand, giving me a wry look. “I’m really messing this all up, aren’t I?”

If he expected me to respond, or to make things better, he was mistaken.

I stayed silent.

“I guess it’s just Brad timing,” he said, probably thinking that his making puns of his name was adorable. It was actually one of the things about him that annoyed the living daylights out of me. To be fair, it was partly my fault for never telling him just how obnoxious it was.

“Uh-oh. You’re not smiling. I guess you aren’t Brad I came.”

“Enough.” I ground the word out. “What do you want?”

He looked taken aback, which wasn’t too surprising given that I’d never snapped at him before. I was always so busy trying to make sure that he liked me that I never got angry at him.

Something else that needed to change.

“Okay . . . so I was in New York last night.”

It probably didn’t say much about the status of our relationship if my first thought after hearing those words was to think of Tyler. Who would soon be in New York.

“And I was thinking about you,” Brad continued. “Thinking how much I’ve taken you for granted. How much I’ve missed you. You’ve always been the best thing that ever happened to me, Madison.”

I blinked, slowly. There was a time when I would have done anything to hear him say these words.

But now? They were just that. Words. Empty, meaningless words.

When my parents kicked me out and cut me off, he was the person I’d reached out to. He had been my boyfriend and I expected his support. His love. But he never responded to my texts, never picked up my phone calls. Until I finally understood that in addition to losing my family I’d also lost the one person who was always supposed to be on my side.

I never knew if his silence meant that he agreed with my parents. Or if he just wasn’t mature enough to be there for me. He hadn’t even had the decency to break up with me. He just . . . disappeared.

Whatever his reasons were, his actions had been terrible.

Something on my face must have tipped him off as to how I was feeling because he rushed on. “And when I started thinking about my future, about what I want and who I want standing by my side, that person is always you. You’re my girl.”

I had to admit, a bit of me melted. I didn’t want it to, but it still happened.

Then he reached into his pocket again, as if he sensed his small victory. He pulled out something that was from Tiffany’s, but was most definitely not a ring box. The relief I felt was immediate and overwhelming.

He handed it to me and against my better judgment I took it. “It made me think of you,” he said.

I opened it to find a diamond tennis bracelet. I caught my breath for a second because of the vast number of carats sitting in front of me. It was gorgeous.

“Do you like it?” he asked. He’d already known how much I would. I had such a weakness for big and sparkly gems. My parents had confiscated my jewelry, which was easy to do since most of it was in my mother’s safe.