Wyatt rejected her every time and blocked her everywhere. So Melanie told my parents I was manipulating him to keep him away from them.

“You marry Melanie,” Gregory snarled, grappling with him in the dirt, “or you get out of this family.”

“I love Sadie!”

“It’ll pass,” Melanie said, bored.

Then an electrician’s truck pulled up at the curb. The worker climbed out, took one look at my bloody face, and had his phone out instantly.

“I’m calling an ambulance right now!”