After Suffering From 33 Accidents Planned by My Fiancee, I Finally Left novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Dinner

The private dining room of the Marchbanks Grand had gold chairs, white lilies and twenty-two places set.

My father had run this hotel for thirty years, and Honoria had booked it for the rehearsal dinner without asking him.

She put me beside Daphne.

"Like old times," she said, and touched my cheek with two cool fingers.

Clement was not in the room.

He was in the service corridor behind the kitchen with the editor's photographer, and my phone sat in my lap with his last text on it: Say the word and I come through the wall.

Crispin sat across from me and smiled all the way through the soup.

Daphne's hand found mine under the cloth.

"You came," she said. "I wasn't sure you would."

"I wasn't sure either."

"You look tired, darling."

"I slept for eleven days," I said. "You're the one who didn't."

She laughed softly, and squeezed.

"I'd do anything for you. You know that."

"I do know that," I said. "I've been learning how much."

Her eyes stayed warm, but her fingers stopped moving.

The waiter set down the wine.

My glass had a thin gold ribbon tied round its stem, so small it looked like decoration.

Nobody else's did.

Daphne lifted hers and turned the stem between her fingers.

"To Thea," she said. "Home where she belongs."

I raised mine, and I watched her watch me.

I touched it to my lips and put it down.

Then, while she turned to answer one of the aunts, I tipped the whole glass into the lilies at my elbow.

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