He Put Our Love on Pause, Then Married Her Behind My Back novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Ladder

Installing the lobby flowers, Jenna hears the office legend of Travis's three breaks and Sam's hand finds her ankle on the ladder.

On Monday I hung forty feet of eucalyptus and white ranunculus from the ceiling of Redfield Freight's lobby, and everyone who walked by knew exactly who I was.

I had told myself I would do it with my chin up.

It lasted until the receptionist put down her phone.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm really sorry. We all feel awful."

"You don't have to."

"We did a pool, though." She winced. "On the breaks. I had the second week of November."

I stopped with a stem in each hand.

"You had a pool."

"Travis would say 'I'm single this week' at happy hour, and the whole sales floor would groan. He called it his reset." She was pink to the ears. "Then he'd go quiet and say he was back with you. We all thought you knew."

I did know.

I knew the words, and I knew he said them. I did not know a whole building was keeping score.

Roz had told me to bring her along for this install.

I had said no.

Now I wished I had said yes.

"Who won the pool?" I asked.

"Nobody. It never ended. That's why it kept going."

She slid a coffee across the desk at me.

I climbed the ladder instead.

The lobby ceiling was twelve feet up, with a steel rail where a banner used to hang.

I had wired the garland in the shop on Sunday, and my plan was simple: clip it to the rail, work down the wall, climb down, never look anyone in the eye.

It was a good plan until the ladder moved.

The left foot of it slid on the polished floor, and I grabbed the rail and said a word my mother would not like.

A hand closed around my calf.

It was a large hand, and warm through my jeans.

"I've got it," Sam said from below me. "Don't move."

I didn't.

He set the ladder's foot back with his other hand, and braced it with his shoe.

I should have felt steady then.

His hand stayed where it was.

It took me a second to understand that I could feel his thumb on the back of my knee, and that I wasn't breathing.

"You can let go," I said.

"I know."

He didn't, for another second.

Then he did, and I climbed down very carefully, and we both studied the garland.

"It's good," he said. His voice was rough. "It's very good."

"It's eucalyptus."

"I meant you."

He heard himself say it. I watched him hear it.

A muscle moved in his jaw.

I decided it was the ladder.

I decided I had imagined the rest of it too, because that was easier.

"You're making my lobby look like a place people want to come to," he said, more carefully. "I'll pay you the weekly rate."

"You'll pay the install rate for four weeks. Then we'll see if you like it."

"I like it."

"You haven't seen the invoice."

The corner of his mouth moved, just once, and then he put it back.

Down the hall someone was laughing. It sounded like Travis.

My whole body went tight, and Sam saw that too.

"He's on the fourth floor," Sam said. "He won't come down. I told his director I'd call him in myself if I saw him in this lobby."

"You didn't have to."

"I know that too."

He looked at the garland again, and then at me.

"Can I ask you something? It's not about flowers."

"It might be."

"Why did you take the reception?"

I could have lied.

"Because he stole eight thousand four hundred dollars of mine," I said. "And the bride just paid it back with his own card. And I want to stand in that ballroom with a clipboard."

Sam nodded slowly.

"Good," he said.

I waited for a speech about being the bigger person.

It didn't come.

"I'm going to tell you something," he said, "and you can use it however you want. Our HR director came to me last week. Travis asked to change his emergency contact twice in four days."

"To Brooke."

"That's what we thought. He withdrew the request both times. His emergency contact has been the same for three years."

I felt the ladder under my hand again, solid now.

"Who is it?"

"You," Sam said. "He never changed it."

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