“Are you proposing to me… or are you making fun of me?”
Emily Carter’s voice rang out across the town square, loud enough that people passing by slowed down and turned to look. Holding her little daughter in her arms, with a torn purse hanging from her shoulder and eyes carrying the exhaustion of someone who had already cried too many times, she stared at the man standing in front of her in a tailored suit as if she were bracing herself for one more humiliation.
Nathan Holloway didn’t even blink.
“I’m serious.”
Emily let out a bitter laugh.
“Rich men love doing this, don’t they? Turning poor women into a joke.”
Cold wind moved through the trees near the small-town bus terminal, while her daughter clung tightly to her neck, frightened by the tension in the air.
Emily was truly lost.
Only hours earlier, she had stepped off a bus after running away from the house where she and her daughter had been staying temporarily. She left before sunrise after overhearing her sister-in-law whisper:
“That useless girl is just going to become everyone else’s problem.”
No money.
No destination.
A dead phone.
She kept trying to hold herself together.
But when her daughter quietly asked for bread and Emily realized she didn’t even have enough change in her pocket, it felt like the ground disappeared beneath her feet.
