He Called My Inheritance a Forgery in Front of Three Hundred Guests, Then Took Every Blow Meant for Me novel · Chapter 19 of 40

Chapter 19: One Room

Nobody spoke.

Outside, a kid shrieked in the pool.

"Rosemary," I said. "Or Chloe."

The lawyer spread his hands.

"I've told you everything I know. Now please. I have a truck to load."

We left him on his box of books.

In the car, I took the phone out of my pocket with shaking fingers.

The red dot was still going.

Twenty-two minutes.

I stopped it and played the last part back.

His thin old voice came out of the speaker into the hot car.

"I traced it in pencil, and then I went over it in pen."

I turned it off.

Kendrick put his good hand over mine on the gearshift.

He didn't say anything.

He didn't have to.

By three, the sky over the Gulf had gone the color of a bruise.

By four, the airline had canceled everything north.

A late storm, the man at the counter said, blowing in off the water.

Nothing out until morning.

The airport hotel had one room left.

"We'll take it," Kendrick said.

I didn't argue.

It had one bed, a window over the parking lot, and an air conditioner that rattled.

The rain hit the glass sideways, in sheets.

The palm trees bent nearly flat.

We ordered room service and didn't eat it.

I sat on the end of the bed with my phone in my lap and played the recording again, and then again.

"Stop," Kendrick said.

"I'm checking it."

"You've checked it four times."

I put the phone down.

"It's Chloe," I said.

My voice came out wrong.

"Somebody who watched him sign. There were three people in that room. You, Rosemary and Chloe."

"Rosemary's my godmother. She held me at my mother's funeral. She stood up for me at the board."

"And Chloe stood there at the gala with her hand in the air and didn't call me for two months."

Kendrick was by the window with the curtain in his good hand, watching the storm.

"It isn't Chloe," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Because Chloe stood beside you in front of Leonard Thorndike and told him to get off her floor."

"She'd lose her job for that in December. She knew it. She did it anyway."

"People who sell you don't do that."

"Then who?"

He let the curtain fall.

"I don't know yet," he said.

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

The lights flickered.

The air conditioner coughed and died.

The room went quiet except for the rain.

I could hear him breathing across the room.

I got up.

I don't remember deciding to.

I crossed the carpet in my bare feet and stopped in front of him at the window.

The light from the parking lot came through the rain and moved on his face.

"You've had a broken arm for ten days," I said. "Because of me."

"Because of a car."

"You've been walking around with a hole in your head and no couch and no boat. Because of my father."

"I chose that."

"I put your receipts on Leonard's table. I called you a forger in front of three hundred people."

"You threw champagne at me," he said. "Don't leave that out."

I almost laughed.

It came out as something else.

He lifted his good hand and touched my face.

Just his fingertips along my jaw.

Like he was checking it was there.

"Genevieve," he said.

The same way he'd said it in the car on the shoulder of the Pike.

Only this time it wasn't a warning.

I kissed him.

It wasn't like the cellar.

It was slow.

It was careful of his arm.

He kissed me back like he'd been waiting years to do it carefully, and the rain kept coming down on the glass behind him.

His good hand went into my hair and pulled the pins out one by one.

They fell on the carpet.

I heard every one land.

"Your arm," I said against his mouth.

"I have one good one."

"Kendrick."

"I only need one good hand for you," he said against my mouth.

I didn't pull back.

I put my hand flat on his chest, over his heart, the way I'd shoved him in the cellar.

← Chapter 18 · All chapters · Chapter 20 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend