Chapter 10: Wendy Sweeney

"Why is my mother texting you?"

I said it to the ceiling, very quietly, with his phone in my hand.

Ben didn't move.

His arm stayed around my waist.

I felt him go still in a different way than he went still when I told him to.

"I was going to tell you," he said.

"Why is my mother texting you at six in the morning?"

"Three weeks ago, the agency called me."

I turned over in his arms and looked at him.

His face was gray in the dawn.

"A woman named Wendy Sweeney booked me for this weekend," he said. "Thursday to Tuesday, paid in full. She wanted me for her daughter."

"For me."

"For you."

I sat up.

The sheet slid off my chest and I didn't care.

"Then a week later, J. Sweeney booked the same weekend, the same man, the same farmhouse."

"The woman at the agency called and said the two names matched. She said it was my call."

"Your call."

"She said I could turn one of you down."

"And you didn't."

"No."

"Why not?"

He sat up too, slowly, against the headboard, and ran a hand over his face.

"My mother had cancer two years ago," he said. "She's fine now."

"The hospital in Albany billed us for the part insurance wouldn't take. I've paid it down for fourteen months, one wedding at a time."

"Wendy was three thousand, you were fifteen hundred, and the bill left is forty-five hundred with the fees."

I looked at him.

"So the two of us together are exactly the bill."

"I know the math."

"So you took both."

"I should have turned one of you down. I couldn't afford to. I'm sorry."