Back With Baby, Ex Regrets Deeply novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: The Question

The swan boat kept going around the little island, slow as a clock.

Teddy had found a duck to stare at and was ignoring both of us.

"Say something," Alistair said.

"I'm thinking."

"You've been thinking for a full lap."

"It's a big question. You took three years to say it. I'm allowed one lap."

He looked out at the water.

His hand was still tight on my shoulder.

"Yes," I said.

His whole frame softened against mine.

"But," I said.

"There's a but."

"There's a big but. I'm not getting married in a cathedral in front of four hundred of your shipping people in hats."

"I hadn't said a cathedral."

"You were thinking it. Gran's been thinking it for three years. I can see the organ in your face."

"It's a very fine organ."

"And nobody gives me away," I said. "Nobody walks me anywhere. Not my father, not your grandmother, not a priest. I walk in on my own feet and I say it myself."

"Agreed."

"And I'm not wearing cream."

He turned his head.

"What are you wearing?"

"Yellow," I said. "My mother's yellow. The color they painted over."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Where?" he said.

I'd known since he said marry me.

I'd known before that, maybe, standing in the clerk's office in my head every night for three years.

"City Hall," I said. "The clerk's office. The same counter."

His face went still.

"Faye."

"Hear me out."

"That room is where they..."

"I know what that room is. I was in it. You weren't." I took his hand off my shoulder and held it in my lap. "Every time I think of getting married, I see that counter. The pencil cup. The line watching. Laurel's ears. I'm thirty years old and I still get the City Hall heat on my neck when I walk past a government building."

"Then why on earth go back?"

"Because I want to take it back." I squeezed his hand. "I want to stand at that counter with a man who got there early. I want the line to watch that. I want the next time I think of that room to be you."

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