“Who is he seeing?” Courtney tries to push me for details.

“Not you.” Now it’s me that’s starting to lose my patience with them.

“Chase, when did you become so rude?” Samantha tries to scold me now.

“When you got in the way of someone I need.” They both give me a confused stare.

“Emily Score. She’s mine,” I tell them before they even get the chance to ask who that someone is. With that, I excuse myself.

Let the rumor mill begin. I smile. Once most men around here hear, they’ll steer clear of Emily for sure. I mean, most already do because of her father, but some still try to slip in there. Now they’ll know without a doubt that they don’t stand a chance.

No one ever did. She was always meant to be mine.

8

Emily

The way women throw themselves at Chase is sickening. I could no longer stand to watch it, so I made my way as far away from that situation as possible. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that I’ll never beg someone for their attention. I’ve been there and done that when it came to my mother, Heidi. Hell, at one point I’d done it to Chase too.

When I think back to that day when I admitted my feelings to him, I want to crawl into a hole and hide. The shock on his face is still burned into my brain all these years later. He’d shut me down so quickly. He tried to be nice about it, saying I was too young and had no clue what I wanted in life. I’m an adult now, and I still don’t.

Why hadn’t he shut down the Hancock sisters if he wasn’t interested in them? Or maybe he is. That’s pretty messed up considering he was dry humping me this morning. He’d also left a mark on my neck that might be hidden but I swear I can still feel it there.

Even though I’m standing on the other side of the room, the jealousy I have hasn’t subsided. I will never in a million years give Chase the satisfaction of knowing that I’m annoyed at seeing those women fawning on him. But I can’t help it. Pretty sure I gave myself away to a degree when I was rude to them.

I’m never rude to people, even when they deserve it. Though I can’t find any guilt over it at the moment. The Hancock sisters pretend I don’t exist, and when they do it’s to get closer to my brother. Good luck with that one, ladies. My brother is in deep with Molly. I could see it all over his face the second we’d stepped in the outside ballroom my stepmother Grace had created in the backyard.