Page 5 of Will You (Not) Marry Me

Eva sucked in a shuddering breath and sniffed. She needed to finish processing what was happening and how she felt about it. She needed to get it out of her body.

“They didn’t even ask me. I wasn’t even part of the conversation. My mother just showed up andtoldme that’s what would be happening. Like I’m a doll that they can throw around wherever they want.”

Abbie wiped Eva’s tears with the sleeve of her shirt. “It’s crazy,” she said, and Eva nodded in agreement.

“Yeah.”

“But you think we’re going to let them win?” Abbie raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrow in a look of disdain that could make flowers wilt.

Eva felt the brief tug of a smile on her face. “No?”

“Absolutely not. Like my gran says, you’ve been sad, now get mad. When you’re sad, you just wallow. When you’re mad, stuff gets done.”

Eva sat up straight, and Abbie nodded her approval.

She’d needed to cry, to rage, to let it all out. But now that she’d released the angry, hurt pressure inside herself, she could think more clearly. She wasn’t just going to be bossed around like this as if she was a pet—as if she didn’t have a choice. She certainly wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

She nodded once as if officially decided.

“That’s my girl!” crowed Abbie, holding her spray bottle in the air triumphantly.

Eva shook her head. No more tears. She was going to figure out how to get out of this if it was the last thing she did.

“Still don’t know what to do about it, though,” she said honestly. Going against the wishes of the royal institution of Skärov wasn’t exactly a light undertaking, even if she was determined about it.

“First off,” said Abbie, that lethal eyebrow of hers lifting again. “I think you should give your dropkick brother a call. This is his mess. Get him to clean it up.”

Eva nodded and reached for her phone. She’d call Magnus and, at the very least, give him the browbeating he deserved.

* * *

It took five attempts before Magnus picked up the phone. Eva didn’t care if it was one a.m. Skärov time. He didn’t deserve a full night’s sleep if his behavior was dragging her into this mess. He’d always preferred parties to press conferences, which was fair enough. But dragging her down with him just wasn’t going to fly.

Eva left the phone on speaker, so Abbie could hear, and so she was free to pace back and forth with her arms folded so she didn’t punch something. The empty sadness was well and truly gone, replaced with quiet fury.

Finally, her brother answered.

“Hey, Eva,” Magnus said, having the decency to sound ashamed of himself. Or was he scared of what she was going to say to him? Maybe a bit of both? Well good. He was the one who’d caused this whole mess.

“Do you know why I came home today to find Mother in my apartment?” Eva said, voice cold as the Arctic.

There was a beat of silence, which was answer enough. Eva could feel the guilt dripping through the phone.

“Well?” she pushed.

Magnus sighed. “I tried to talk them out of it.”

“Clearly, you didn’t try hard enough.” She snorted.

Magnus sighed again, frustrated. “You know how they are. They’re too stubborn for their own good. But they have our best interests at heart.”

“No,” sneered Eva. “They have Skärov’s best interests at heart. They always have. Which is fine, you know, that’s kind of their job. But apparently,youhave made our family a laughing stock, and somehow that’s now my problem!”

Abbie looked between Eva and the phone that rested on the coffee table, unable to keep up with the blur of the siblings switching between English and their native language seemingly at random. But it had always been how Eva and Magnus talked, growing up bilingual. They’d had their own secret dialect as kids that no one else could keep up with. Then over the years as they’d grown apart, that language had crumbled. Eva tried to pretend it didn’t bother her. And right now, at least, she was too angry to care.

“Eva,” said Magnus, and she could just imagine him raising his hands trying to calm her down.

“Magnus,” she countered. “Clean up your act, give an apology speech and deal with this mess yourself.”

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