I Fled the Wedding, the Obsessed CEO Lost His Sanity novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Sunday

The Fox leaned against the wall of my studio all night, wrapped in its grey blanket, and I did not unwrap it.

At eight the next morning, Clarence Lowell knocked on my door with a bag of bagels and a folded newspaper.

"You're up," he said.

"I'm standing."

"That's close."

Maddie lay face down on my couch with one boot still on.

She raised a hand without lifting her head.

"I'm awake," she said into the cushion. "Is there cream cheese?"

"There's cream cheese."

"Marry me, Clarence."

"I'm seventy-four and spoken for, by a woman who is dead." He sat at my drafting table and spread the crossword over my pencils. "Sit, Miss Hollander. Seven letters. Return something to its owner."

I stood at the counter and thought about it.

"Restore," I said.

"Seven." He wrote it in. "You're good at this."

My phone buzzed on the counter, and I flipped it over.

Harvey.

Three missed calls from two in the morning, and nothing after.

No voicemail.

Clarence did not look up from the newspaper, but his pen stopped moving.

I turned the phone face down.

It was the same thing Harvey had done in my kitchen in April, and I noticed that, and I didn't like it.

"He won't ask me to call him back," I said.

"No?"

"He said he wouldn't."

"He's a man of his word, then." Clarence wrote another letter. "Lately."

The laptop on my table chimed.

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