Chapter 2Surviving The Plot As The Country Girl

By dinnertime, my mood had only improved.

Rich people really knew how to live. A casual Tuesday dinner looked like a Thanksgiving feast.

At the long mahogany table, Richard, Eleanor, and Preston were all busy peeling shrimp and cutting the prime rib for Serena, making sure her plate was perfect.

I didn't care about the optics. I grabbed the bowl of garlic mashed potatoes, scooped a mountain onto my plate, grabbed three rolls, and absolutely inhaled my food.

When I set down my water glass, a long, rumbling burp slipped out of me.

All three of them froze, their silverware suspended in mid-air as they stared at me in horror.

I quickly slapped a hand over my mouth. "My bad. I forgot. Do people on the East Coast not do the digestion burp?"

Serena, whose eyes were still a little puffy from her afternoon crying session, stared at me blankly. "Mom, Dad, and Preston have been doting on me all night. Aren't you angry? Aren't you jealous?"

"Jealous of what?" I patted my comfortably full stomach, grinning so wide my cheeks ached. "I’m full, it’s warm in here, and the food is incredible. Why would I be mad?"

I pushed my chair back. "If there are no chores to do, I’m gonna head up to bed."

The three of them nodded mechanically, too stunned to speak.

I happily jogged up the stairs, threw myself onto my cloud of a bed, and fell asleep in seconds.

That night, I had a vivid, terrifying dream.

It was a revelation, really. It showed me that the world I was living in was the exact plot of one of those dramatic, trope-heavy romance novels.

Serena was the spiteful, jealous secondary character harboring a toxic crush on the male lead. My parents, blinded by their love for her, would eventually offend the male lead and drive the Carmichael family into utter bankruptcy. Preston would develop a dark, pathological obsession with the female lead, pulling dirty tricks to ruin the male lead, only to end up rotting in federal prison.

And me? After the Carmichaels lost everything, I’d be shipped right back to the dirt-poor farm in Montana.

Absolutely not.

I woke up in a cold sweat. I had just gotten my hands on this luxury, and nobody—not my dramatic new family, and certainly not some fictional plotline—was going to rip it away from me.