He Hid Me for Twelve Years, Now the City Knows My Name novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Not in a Hundred Years

Lorna came up the stairs with snow on her shoulders and her eyes wet.

She did not hug me this time.

"A gossip site has an audio file," she said. "They'll post it at six. I wanted Harrison to hear it from me first."

"Hear what?" Harrison said.

"It's Kate."

She put the flash drive in my laptop on the kitchen table and pressed play.

My own voice came out of the speaker, thick and slurred and laughing.

I'd never marry him. Not in a hundred years.

The file stopped.

The apartment was very quiet.

I looked at Harrison.

His face had gone gray.

"I've heard it," he said.

"What?"

"I've heard that clip before." His voice was flat. "Three years ago. Lorna played it for me the night after your friend's wedding."

I turned slowly to Lorna.

"You played it for him."

"He found me crying in the car," she said quickly. "I didn't want him to hear it like that. I thought he deserved to know where you stood."

"Where I stood."

"Kate, you said it."

"I said it in your kitchen at two in the morning, after my friend's wedding, with half a bottle of wine in me."

"I know."

"And the rest of the sentence?"

Lorna blinked.

"There isn't any."

"There's a rest," I said. "The clip stops at 'a hundred years.' I said I would never marry him if I had to be the girl on the back stairs for a hundred years."

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