The Man Who Can't Let Her Go novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: In the Light
The private room at the Alder Club had every light on.
Lydia stood in the doorway in her green dress and looked at the faces.
The same forty guests sat at the tables, in the same chairs.
The confetti had been swept up.
Nobody held a party popper.
Hayden had been right to keep the door open.
She could see them all, and they could see her.
A woman by the cake got up and pressed a hand to her chest.
It was the one who had laughed under her breath at the birthday.
"Mrs. VanAlen," she said. "Please come in."
Lydia walked in.
Hayden stood at the far end of the room, by the place where the cake had stood.
He wore a dark suit and no tie, and his hands hung at his sides.
He did not smile.
"Thank you for coming," he said to the room.
"I know most of you came out of curiosity. I don't blame you. I gave you a show."
A man laughed nervously and stopped.
"A week and a half ago, I stood in the dark in this room," Hayden said. "I let you all watch me make the worst mistake of my life, and I let her stand here with the lights coming on."
"She did not deserve that. It was my mistake."
"Hayden," Lydia said.
"Let me finish."
She folded her hands.
"The woman I kissed is my wife," he said. "She came back from a city a day away because my grandmother wrote to her."
"For three years I told this room she'd left me. I let you believe it. It was easier than saying that I had never gone after her."
The room had gone very quiet.
"I didn't fly to find her once. Not once. I had thirty-six letters and a company jet and nothing in my way but my own pride."
"I said she'd left. She had been sent away by a woman I trusted. I didn't check, because I didn't want to know."
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