My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Chair
Cade's POV
The hands had left the side door of Wiedenfeld Hall open for us, and a lantern burning on the stage.
It was the fourteenth of February, a Sunday night, and there was a pie on a card table and two forks.
Tilly stood in the middle of the empty dance floor in her mother's blue dress and turned in a slow circle.
The hall her grandfather built held four hundred people when it was full.
Tonight it held the two of us and the smell of beeswax on old pine boards.
"They did this," she said.
"They did," I said.
"Which one?"
"All of them, I think. One of them knew where the lantern was."
I had not told her that I asked.
I had meant to tell her for two weeks.
Each night she had come to my bed and kissed me, and I had put it off one more night.
I took the pie off the table and sat on the edge of the stage.
She came and stood between my knees and looked at me with her head tilted.
"You've been quiet since Thursday," she said.
"Tilly."
"Say it."
"I went to the Verein kitchens," I said. "Sixteen of them. On rounds, in the evenings, after the calls."
Her face did not change.
"I sat at each table with my hat on my knee," I said. "I said one thing. She'll light it. Come and see."
"Cade."
"I know. You didn't ask me. It was your name on the hill and not mine."
"You asked sixteen families to come to my fire," she said.
"Yes."
"Without telling me."
"Yes," I said.
She put both hands flat on my chest.
"I wondered why every rancher in the county stopped lying to me about the weather," she said.
I looked at her.
Her mouth twitched.
"I'm not angry," she said. "I'd like you to ask me next time."
"I will."
"And I'd like you to stand next to me on Holy Saturday and not behind."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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