He Bet My Life and Lost Me Instead novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Her Favorite Thing

The defamation letter lay on my grandmother's table all evening, under the salt shaker.

Sam read it twice and said Brennick Partners had no case. Marco said we should frame it.

I didn't read it again, because I knew what it wanted, which was for me to be afraid of a piece of paper.

Dylan was sitting on my grandmother's porch steps at midnight.

I saw him through the kitchen window when I came down for water.

Sam had gone up to bed with a shut face two hours earlier, and Marco was asleep on the couch with a cookbook on his chest.

I opened the front door and stood in my socks.

"I'm not here to ask you for anything," Dylan said, without turning around. "I just didn't want to be in the hotel."

"It's midnight."

"I know."

I sat down on the step above his, with the cold boards against the backs of my legs.

For a while neither of us said anything.

A bus went by on Halsted, lit up and empty.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Yes."

"What was my favorite thing before the fire?"

He turned his head.

"Your favorite what?"

"Anything. A food, a place, a song. What did I do on Saturdays when I was twenty-four?"

He opened his mouth.

I watched him go looking for the answer, honestly, and come back with nothing.

"You liked..." he said. "You were always working. You were a good sleeper. You loved your grandmother."

"That's a list of what was easy for you."

"Nina."

"You made me shakshuka for five years."

"It's your favorite."

"I ate it at your table the first week because you said it was your mother's recipe, and I was being polite." I kept my voice level. "I don't hate it. I never said it was my favorite. You never asked."

He stared at me.

"In five years you asked me what my numbers were. You asked me if I'd taken my medicine. You asked me what the doctor said, and whether I was tired, and whether I'd been near a candle."

"I was afraid for you."

"I know. And you never once asked what I wanted to do with my life."

My voice shook, finally, on the last word.

"I wanted to run the whole company, Dylan. I wanted to take the freight network national. I told you in the first year. You said, 'Don't stress your lungs.' And you smiled at me and you changed the subject, and I let you, because being looked after felt like being loved."

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