Chapter 20: In Your Own Words

Quincy's POV

I watched my brother walk to the lectern with a phone in his hand and June's hand in mine.

Her fingers had gone cold.

I felt it in the moment he started to read.

"Zara," Brett said into the microphone. "People say you can't know someone from their words alone."

June's lips parted.

I didn't need to look at the phone to know what it held.

I had seen those words once, in a powder room, at the bottom of a six-month thread.

"But I knew who you were the first time I heard you."

Zara sat with her chin lifted and her hands folded in her lap.

She sat triumphant, clearly having planned this moment for weeks.

Across the ballroom my father watched Brett with his arms crossed, and one finger tapped against his sleeve.

On my right, June breathed in once.

She was about to stand up.

I could feel it through the chair, through her arm, through the table.

She would stand, and she would say it, and for the first time since I had known her she would do it with her whole face showing.

And I wanted to let her.

I wanted it more than anything.

But there was something else I wanted, and it had been waiting longer.

I pushed back my chair.

"Quincy," June whispered.

"Stay."

"What are you doing?"

"Something I should have done at my father's dinner table three Sundays ago."

I walked across the ballroom.

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