He Hid Me for Twelve Years, Now the City Knows My Name novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Night Before

Harrison found me in the bedroom at eleven on Friday night, holding the dress up against the closet door.

It was green silk, cut simply, with a note pinned to the hanger in Sylvia's blue ink.

Not the black one.

"She sent it by courier," I said. "It fits. I don't know how it fits."

"She had your measurements from the investigator."

"That is deeply creepy."

"I know." He leaned in the doorway. "She's thrilled with herself."

I hung the dress back up and turned around.

"I want to say something, and I want you to hear all of it before you say anything."

He straightened.

"Tomorrow I'm walking into that hotel for me," I said. "Not for you, and not for your mother. I'm not doing it to be chosen. I'm doing it because I stood by that coat check in the sleet and I want to stand in it in the light."

"All right."

"I haven't decided about you."

His face didn't change, which I thought was the bravest thing I had ever seen him do.

"The thirty days end on the seventeenth," I said. "If I say no, you let me walk out of that hotel and you don't follow me to the street."

"If you say no, I'll walk you to the street. I won't follow you past it."

"Good."

"And if you say yes?"

"Then I'll tell you in front of your mother."

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