One Night to Forever novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Dress

Bianca picked up the pen.

Her hand shook, and she put it down again.

"This is a farce," she said. "I'm not a criminal."

"No one has said you are," Margaret replied. "Write."

The aunt leaned forward.

The uncle stopped chewing.

Bianca wrote on the pad in a slow round hand, then tore off the sheet and pushed it down the table.

Ford lined it up beside the yellow sticky note.

"The loop on the g," he said quietly. "The way the x's cross. The stroke on the B."

"It's the same hand, Mrs. Ryerson."

Bianca laughed, a high, brittle laugh.

"Of course it's the same hand. I wrote it."

Everyone stared at her.

"I wrote it as a joke," she said. "Cass begged me for a way to meet Desmond for weeks."

"She was the one with the crush. I lent her the dress to be kind, and I told her to go and shake his hand."

"I never told her to do anything else."

"You gave her a badge with your name on it," Hazel said.

"I was sick! It was a thank-you drink."

"A thank-you drink at two in the morning in a suite," Margaret said, drily. "For a vendor's account director."

Bianca's mouth opened and shut.

"You told this family you were the woman in the corridor," Desmond said.

He had not raised his voice once.

He stood at the window with his back to the lake, and his face was something I had not seen on him before.

"You sat at my grandmother's table wearing someone else's night."

"Desmond," Bianca whispered.

"You let me believe it for fourteen days."

"I was afraid I would lose you."

"You never had me," he said.

It was said quietly, and it landed on a tile floor.

Bianca flinched.

Her eyes went around the table, to the aunt, to the uncle, to Margaret, hunting for one ally.

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