I SEE CHEATERS! So Yeah, My Fiancé's Wedding Went Up In Flames! novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Twenty-Six Hours

I laughed.

I didn't plan to. It came up out of me, right there in my own doorway.

Rafferty's soft face slipped.

"I'm serious," he said.

"I know," I said. "That's what's funny."

He came up one more step. He lowered his voice, but on that street, on a Sunday night, it carried to every stoop.

"I made a mistake. One. The night before my wedding, I panicked, and I made one mistake."

Kelsey made a small sound behind him.

"And I'm not mad about the strings," he went on. "I want you to know that. I forgive you for that. We'll get you somebody to talk to. A good doctor. My mom knows people."

"You forgive me," I said.

"For yesterday. For the screen." He spread his hands. "You were hurt. I get it. People do crazy things when they're hurt."

"You set the screen on fire, Rafferty."

"That was an accident."

"So was Thursday?"

He ignored that. He was good at ignoring things.

"Your mom's upset," he said. "Of course she is. But she'll come around if you do. She loves you. If we stand up together and say we worked it out, she'll see it."

And there it was.

I could almost watch him do the math behind his eyes. The ballroom, the hotel, the half of a building in Old City.

"You don't want me," I said. "You want my mother to un-fire you."

"That's not fair."

"You want the papers in her safe."

His jaw tightened, the way it did when a guest complained about the minibar.

Kelsey came down off the stoop and stood beside him.

"You told me," she said to him, very quietly. "You told me she was done. You said yesterday was the end of it."

"Kels, go inside."

"You just asked her to marry you. In front of me. On my stoop."

"It's my stoop," I said.

Kelsey turned and looked at me with real hate, the first honest look she'd given me in eight years.

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