He Dumped Me at Our Rehearsal Dinner, So a Man Twice My Age Took Me Home novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: After the Ball

By two in the morning the ballroom was empty, and the chandeliers had been turned down to a dim gold.

Lauren's husband had taken her out by the elbow an hour before.

Nobody had shouted at her.

The nine women from the garden had stood with the old woman, and nobody had looked at Lauren at all, and that had been worse.

Frankie had gone home in a cab with a napkin full of crab puffs and a hug for each of us that cracked a rib.

"My boy's alive," Brendan had said to her, quietly, at the door.

"I heard the whole room," Frankie said. "Go home."

We walked to Bull Street in the cold, with my shoes in my hand.

Brendan wore his bow tie undone and his coat around my shoulders over the green dress.

The squares were deserted, and the live oaks dripped, and the Christmas lights on the iron fences blinked red and gold.

He hadn't said a word since Madison Square.

At the townhouse door I took out my own key and opened it myself.

He followed me into the dark front hall.

The stairs rose in front of us, a long flight of polished wood with a banister, and a little tree winked in the corner.

He closed the door.

I turned around with my back against the newel post.

He stood in front of me, enormous, with the light from the street on one side of his face.

"Two o'clock," he said.

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