He Ditched Our Wedding, I Married His Wealthy Uncle novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Check

Ramsey admits the check and the condition he put on it; Jody drives home alone, gives him the hayloft instead of her bed, and wakes to a trailer of the airport kiss going everywhere.

Nobody at the rail breathed.

Kyla's phone swung back to my face, fast and greedy.

I didn't look at Dylan.

I looked at Ramsey, because he was the one who'd gone still.

"Tell him he's lying," I said.

Ramsey didn't say anything.

The whole rail heard that.

Dylan spread his hands like a game show host. "Ask him what he wrote on the memo line."

"Move," I said.

I took the handle of Ramsey's suitcase myself and walked.

I didn't check whether he followed.

His footsteps came behind me, long and steady, the whole length of the terminal.

Kyla's voice floated after us. "Jodes! One more for the people at home!"

Level three of the short-term garage smelled like gas and wet concrete.

His old blue pickup sat where I'd parked it three hours early.

There was a thermos of coffee on the dash for him.

I threw his suitcase in the bed and turned around.

"Is it true?"

"Yes."

"Tell me all of it, Mr. Gannett."

He flinched at the name.

"The night before the wedding, Dylan came to my apartment. He asked me for fifty thousand dollars for the honeymoon."

"We were going to Lake George," I said. "Three nights. In my car."

"I asked him if he even loved you."

"What did he say?"

His jaw worked. "He said he was leaving either way. Wedding or no wedding. He already had the tickets."

My throat closed.

"So you paid him."

"I wrote the check on one condition. He had to drive up to Pine Hollow that night and tell you himself. In person. Before you ever put on the dress."

"He didn't."

"He cashed it at nine the next morning. Then he texted you from this airport."

I remembered the text.

3:52 in the afternoon, my bouquet in one hand and my phone in the other.

"A week later you sat on my porch steps," I said. "You gave me back my own ring. You told me you'd paid every vendor."

"Yes."

"Then fourteen months of Sundays."

"Yes."

"In the hay truck, when you asked me out."

"Yes."

"At the clerk's office, Ramsey. Clyde wore a carnation."

He shut his eyes for one second.

"I wrote you a letter about it," he said. "A year ago. It's in the glovebox."

I stared at the glovebox.

"You wrote me a letter and drove it around for a year."

"I couldn't find a way to hand it to you that didn't end with you gone."

"So you decided for me."

"Yes."

"I'd do the check again," he said quietly. "I'd undo the silence."

"Great. Which part do you want me to forgive first?"

"I'm not asking you for anything tonight."

I held out my hand. "Keys."

He put them in my palm, warm from his pocket.

"I'm taking the truck home."

"Okay."

"You can get yourself to the Catskills. You own eleven hotels. Figure it out."

The corner of his mouth moved.

"Don't you dare smile," I said.

"I'm not."

I climbed in and slammed the door.

He stood in my headlights with his hands in his pockets and let me go.

I cried once, at the toll plaza, and hated that I did it in his truck.

The glovebox stayed shut the whole way north.

Pine Hollow was dark except for the barn.

Clyde was in there with a mug of coffee, on an upturned bucket by Mabel's stall.

Mabel was lying down in her straw.

At fifty-eight she did that now, and my stomach went tight until I checked her breathing.

Steady and deep.

Fine.

Clyde looked past me at the empty doorway.

"Where's your husband?"

"In a car somewhere."

He looked at my face for a while.

"You want the shotgun or the coffee?"

"Coffee."

"Good. I can't find the shotgun."

He poured me half his mug.

Bunny reached over her gate, plucked the ball cap off my head and put it on her own, sort of.

Duchess rumbled at me from the dark, low enough to feel in my ribs.

I sat on the straw with my back against Mabel's warm side and told Clyde everything.

He didn't say a word until I was done.

"Fifty grand," he said finally. "On the condition the boy told you himself."

"Yes."

"And the boy didn't."

"No."

Clyde grunted and drank his coffee.

He went home to his bungalow at the gate at midnight, limping on his bad knee.

Headlights came up the drive at ten past one.

A black car I didn't know.

Ramsey got out with his suitcase.

I was waiting on the farmhouse porch in my flannel with my arms crossed.

I threw him the hayloft key.

He caught it one-handed.

"Mabel snores," I said.

He looked at the farmhouse door behind me.

Then at me.

"Tonight was supposed to be the night," he said.

"I know what tonight was supposed to be."

He came up two steps.

Close enough that I could smell the airplane on him and, under it, him.

He didn't touch me.

"I'm not going anywhere, Jo."

"You're going to the hayloft."

He went.

Upstairs, on my pillow, was the black silk slip I'd bought for him in August.

I'd laid it out that morning.

I shoved it in the bottom drawer and lay awake watching the hayloft light through my window until it finally went out.

At six my phone buzzed on the nightstand.

It was a link to a trailer.

RUNNING WITH GIANTS: THE FINALE.

Slow motion, my hands on Ramsey's face at the rail, his arm hauling me up against him.

Then white words on black.

"She married his uncle. He's coming home anyway."

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