I Signed Away Eight Million to Leave Him novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Terrace

I held the fifth photo up so Brennan could see it.

"Do you know what he's saying in this one?" I asked.

"I can guess."

"No. You can't. That's the whole problem. You guessed."

The wind came off the water and flapped the shirt against my legs.

I didn't go inside. I wanted the photographer to hear this too.

"Christmas Eve," I said. "Three years ago. Your mother's party. Do you remember where you were at midnight?"

Brennan opened his mouth and shut it.

"Your phone buzzed at ten to twelve," I said. "You looked at it, and you said 'work,' and you kissed my forehead and went upstairs."

"It was a call."

"It was Christmas Eve. I stood at the terrace doors for twenty minutes waiting for you to come back down for midnight."

I could still feel the cold glass of that door on my palm.

"It was the third Christmas in a row you'd left me alone at that party. I went outside so nobody would see me cry."

I looked down at the second photo. At the girl in green velvet hugging herself.

"I'd been out there maybe five minutes," I said. "Corbin came out to smoke the one cigarette he has a year."

"Christmas Eve," Corbin said quietly. "Only Christmas Eve."

"He saw me shaking. He put his coat on me."

I held up the fifth photo again, the one with his mouth at my ear.

"He leaned down and said, 'You deserve someone who stays.' Then he went back inside and played the piano for your mother's guests. I went up to bed in his coat. I gave it back to him on Christmas morning in front of your whole family, and you said, 'Did you get cold, babe?'"

Brennan was staring at the photo.

"That's it," I said. "That's three years. A ten-second clip and a coat."

For a moment I thought he believed me.

Then his eyes slid down to the shirt I was wearing. Corbin's shirt.

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