When Love Runs Dry novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: The Price

A car alarm whooped somewhere on the level below us.

Tobias waited.

He'd always been good at waiting across a table. He knew the other side usually blinked.

"Say that again," I said.

"Christmas at the house. Three days. I'll sell the town its water in January, at nine million."

"And Delaney?"

His jaw moved.

"Delaney's my problem."

"She's carrying your miracle."

He flinched. Just a little, at the corner of his eye.

"You read the letter," I said. "Did you ask her?"

"Mere, I'm offering you the thing you want."

"No. You're offering me a trade."

"That's how things get done."

"That's how you get done." I shifted the drafting tube on my shoulder. "Five years ago you bought me with a house. Now you want to buy me back with my grandmother's water."

"That isn't what this is."

"Then sell it to the town anyway. Without me in the deal."

He didn't answer.

He didn't have to. His face did it for him.

"No," I said. "I won't come home for Christmas. I won't come home at all."

"You'd let that whole town pay a hundred and forty percent so you can win an argument with me?"

"I'd let that whole town buy its water back with its own vote, and then I'd run it."

"You can't win a referendum. Two-thirds. Against my lawyers."

"Then watch."

Nolan's truck came up the ramp with its headlights on us.

Opal rolled down the passenger window.

"Merry. In. My feet are cold."

I got in the back.

Tobias stood alone under the garage lights in his tuxedo.

He looked smaller than I'd ever seen him. That was the strange part.

Nobody in the truck said a word until the highway.

Then Opal said, "Well. That fish was terrible."

And Nolan laughed so hard he had to pull onto the shoulder.

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