I Don't Want Your Love Out of Pity novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: What She Believed

I played Priscilla's voice for Conal in his study, with the door shut.

The girls were out in the yard with the foreman's wife.

He listened with both fists on the desk.

When the recording said the word cripple, a muscle jumped in his jaw.

When it said cheaper than your surgery, he turned away and put his forehead against the window frame.

"You're not going to that gala," he said.

"I am."

"She's taking you into a room of three thousand people with her father holding the note."

"I know what she's doing."

"Then you also know I won't let her."

I waited.

He heard what he had said a moment later, and he shut his eyes.

"That came out wrong," he said.

"It came out exactly right. It's the same sentence."

"Leandra."

"Conal, sit down."

He sat in his father's chair.

I did not sit.

I stood in front of the desk with my cane and said what I had been rehearsing since the porch.

"For seven years, every big thing in my life was chosen by somebody else. The fire chose my legs. Dane chose my settlement. You chose the clinic."

"Yes."

"I've been choosing since the airport. I choose my work, and my daughters' school, and what I eat for breakfast. I'm good at it."

"You are."

"I need you to stop deciding for me, even when it's out of love. Especially then." My voice cracked, and I let it. "You can tell me you're afraid. You can tell me I'm wrong. You do not get to take it out of my hands."

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