Her Wedding Dress novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Legally

By nine that night a van with a satellite dish was parked outside my friend's building.

I took a cab to the address Rhett had texted me.

It was a rented apartment above a bookshop near the river.

He opened the door in a gray T-shirt with his phone in his fist.

He looked like a man who had been called a stalker forty times since lunch.

"Fact," he said. "The foundation won't take my calls."

"Anything else?"

"Two nurses from my old team wrote to ask if it's true."

"Is it?"

"No."

"I know that," I said. "I wanted to hear you say it."

He let me in.

It was one big room with a kitchen along one wall and a bed in the corner.

The window was full of the river's lights.

I sat on the edge of the bed because my back hurt.

He stayed by the counter with his arms folded.

"Say what you came to say," he said.

"You say it first. You've been working up to something since the elevator."

He looked at the floor.

"In a month you'll have a baby and a husband on his knees," he said. "He'll cry, and he's the father."

"And?"

"And you keep your word. If you want to go back for the child's sake, I'll understand. I won't make it harder."

I stared at him.

"That is the stupidest thing I've heard all week, and I've heard Tyler talk about his car."

"Autumn."

"Do you want to wait?" I said. "Until I'm not legally his wife?"

His jaw moved.

"Yes. It would be the decent thing."

I started to laugh, and I couldn't stop.

I stood up and crossed the room.

I took two fistfuls of his shirt and looked up at him.

"Legally," I said.

Then I kissed him.

He made the same low sound he had made in the car.

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