His Public Confession Was a Lie, So I Stopped Loving Him novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: You Nodded

I did not cry on the stairs.

I waited until I was out in the cold yard, between the bikes and the sagging fence, and then I turned around.

Ben had followed me out and stopped on the porch steps.

"Say it," he said.

"Eight days."

"Rory."

"Eight days, Ben. I've been the Jacket Girl for eight days. I sang in front of a room full of people who wanted to laugh at me." My voice rose. "You sat above all of them with the board and the lights. You could have said one sentence."

"I know."

"One sentence. 'I wrote that.' You said nothing."

"You nodded." He came down one step. "I've been angry about it for eight days, and I knew it wasn't fair, and I stayed angry. I watched you say yes to him in front of everyone, and I thought I'd been stupid. I thought I'd wanted somebody who didn't exist."

"I said no ten minutes later."

"I didn't know what you'd said until Sage told me on Sunday." He pushed a hand through his hair. "By then you'd already turned him down, and I'd already hidden in my room like a coward."

"You knew I'd turned him down."

"Yes."

"And then you ran the board at the open mic. You turned the lights on for me. You gave me a capo." I stared at him. "And you still said nothing."

"Because every time I tried to say it, the words sounded like a second lie."

"What?"

"A guy writes you a message, and another guy posts it, and then the first guy shows up a week later and says it was really him all along." His jaw worked. "That's what Preston would do. I didn't want to be that. I wanted you to hear it when I could prove it."

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