Page 51 of The Inevitable Us

“Did you marry my little girl,” he spits out.

“Not yet. But I’m going to,” I answer with a proud tilt to the head. “Just waiting till...”

With a loud thump of the screen door, my family walks outside. I glance over, and my mother is standing, still in her apron, her hand over her mouth. My father and uncle observe the scene as if waiting to jump in.

Rosalie is standing on the porch, her hands wrapped around herself. “Dad?” she asks.

His shoulders slump in relief at seeing Rosalie whole and well, but his voice is that of a terrified father. “We’ve torn up three counties looking for you, Rosalie. Your mother is frantic, worried, thinking your new secret boyfriendhas hurt you. We didn’t know what to think when we found the empty apartment.”

I walk over to Rosalie and lay a comforting arm around her waist. I slowly rub her hip with my thumb, hoping to soothe her. “Does she look like I’ve hurt her? And this wasn’t a secret, just new.”

His eyes narrow into slits as he stands a few feet away, his hands balled into angry fists at his side as his gaze goes back and forth from me to Rosalie.

She blinks at him. “Oh, Dad, I’m so so sorry. There’s no reception whatsoever here. I turned my phone off because it was just killing the battery on Saturday afternoon, and I haven’t even tried to turn it back on.”

“So you’ve been here since Saturday with him?” Ethan bites out.

“With us, sir,” my uncle Brody interjects, walking in from behind Rosalie.

The sting of betrayal finds her father’s face, and his features harden. “You knew?”

“I just recently found out. Thought they were both adults and had a right to tell you when they wanted to.”

Ethan’s nostrils flare, and his knuckles whiten with rage. “You will not profit from this in any way,” he tells me, just as I’d expected him to. “I won’t buy you off. I won’t do that to Rosalie. And I won’t invest in your little company or refer you to my friends. You will not profit, in any way, from your relationship with Rosalie. So if that’s your plan, you can forget it.”

I’d planned for this moment for months now. Refused to touch Rosalie until I knew if he cut her off, I could take care of her. “Your money won’t be needed,” I tell him. “I’ve already made sure I can take care of Rosalie.”

His eyes go to his cell phone, which likely has zero bars as the rest of ours do, then back to Rosalie. “Your mother and I have had quite a scare. I’m going to go cool off before I say something I’ll regret. Call your mother from a landline,” he orders before pivoting on his heel and getting back into the passenger side of the SUV. For the first time, I notice Creekman standing nearby, an expressionless look on his face.

Creekman turns without affording me as much as a wave and gets into the driver’s side.

“I’m driving Rosalie back to Knoxville in a bit,” I tell Ethan. “I’ll make sure Tessa knows how to get in touch with her.”

This isn’t how I wanted them to find out. After years of caring for the Coleman family, the last thing I wanted was for Tessa and the others to be upset.

He turns and gets into the car with only a head nod as a goodbye to Rosalie.

Thephonecallfrommy parents’ landline and the call from Rosalie’s cell phone during the drive back to Knoxville isn’t pleasant. Rosalie cried more than once, yelled, tried to explain, and pleaded. I couldn’t make out any of what Tessa said, but it sounded like she was on the phone with Tessa and then Josie. “I haven’t been living with him this whole time,” she explains on her cell phone during the drive home. “We just… didn’t sleep apart.”

Tessa’s voice had reached full alto at that comment.

“I did not go to Knoxville to be with Sawyer, Mom,” she tries to explain.

And lastly, “I threw myself athim.”The last comment made my blood boil, and I gripped the steering wheel tighter as I drove us back to the ranch.

I’d have thought that the four of us— Rosalie, Tessa, and Ethan, and I, would get together and talk once we arrived back in Knoxville. I’d asked which hotel they were staying at so we could sit down and talk, which is how this should have gone.

Instead, they’re on their way back to Nashville, Tessa saying that Ethan needs to cool down.

“Everyone just needs to calm down, Rosalie,” I say for the thousandth time. “It doesn’t help that they thought something happened to you. Kidnapping has always been their biggest fear.”

She nods. “I know. I think that’s what they’re actually the angriest about. They’d called the FBI already! It’s so embarrassing.”

I watch as she walks around the ranch, taking her time with the animals, talking softly to them. I check on her every chance I get, trying to make her laugh.

When I come to bed after my shift in the wee hours of the morning, I pull her close to me and whisper to her softly, “I love you, Rosalie. More than you could ever know.”

Little heaves, proof that she’s still crying, vibrate on my chest. “I love you too, Sawyer.”

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