He Was Reborn to Claim Me, But I'm Already Married novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Board Meets Monday

The picnic emptied slowly, boat by boat and car by car, and nobody said goodnight to Cornelia.

By one in the morning the tent was down to its poles.

Leighton was still sitting at the end of our dock with his shoes off and his feet over the water.

I went out and sat down beside him.

I left a yard of boards between us.

"Where were you?" he said again, to the lake. "I looked at your face for twelve years."

"You looked at the back of Jocelyn's head."

"I know. I'm asking where you were."

"Down the hall," I said. "Behind a door you never opened."

He took that without moving.

A loon called somewhere across the cove, long and cracked.

"Cornelia told me you were a clever, patient girl," Leighton said. "She said you'd be easy to manage. She said it the week of the reception, in the first life. She chose you for the rose."

I turned my head.

"She chose me?"

"She watched you paint. You were plainer than your sister, and you wanted me, and you'd never leave." He laughed, short and ugly. "I thought I picked you myself. I thought I was cruel on my own."

The water lapped at the posts.

"I was twenty-eight," Leighton said. "I didn't look at a single thing she told me to look at twice."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you're the only person I can say it to."

I should have been moved.

I was not, and I let him see it.

"I'm not going to forgive you tonight, Leighton," I said. "I'm not going to tell you it was only your mother."

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