He Married His Childhood Sweetheart for Her Prank, I'm Nobody's Mistress, EVER novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Four Years

I sat there with the blanket on my shoulders and said nothing for a long time.

Declan didn't fill the quiet.

He watched the lamp and waited.

"Where were you," I said, "when I woke up in the hospital?"

"Emme."

"I woke up with a tube in my arm and a nurse telling me a man had died for me."

"I know."

"Rodney came," I said. "He sat by my bed for two days."

"I know."

"Delphine came in a black dress, held my hand and cried on it. Bea came after her shift every night."

I turned and looked at him.

"You were nowhere."

"I was in the parking lot with Rodney," he said. "Then I was in my truck. Then I was on the interstate."

"I wasn't asking where your truck was."

He took that.

I watched him take it.

"You were on the dock," I said. "You saw her hands on my back. You had my arm in yours on the ice."

"Yes."

"And then four years. Not a card. Not one text. Not one word to the woman you pulled out of a lake."

"No."

"I thanked her every winter," I said. "I put on her socks. I stood next to her in a ballroom and said I was sorry for her loss."

"I know."

"I would have asked you. If you had come once, I would have looked at your face and asked what you weren't saying."

My voice broke on the last word, and I hated that.

He did not touch me.

He didn't ask me to forgive him.

"I have a list of reasons," he said. "I've had four years to polish it. None of it holds up. I was ashamed, and it was easier to be ashamed in Portland than in your hospital room."

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