I Didn't Marry Him, I Married The One He Hated novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Find Your Own Way Home

Linnea's POV

By six o'clock the yard held more than two hundred people.

The crew had hung lanterns from the hulls and strung lights across the pier, and a small stage stood at the end of the dock with a microphone and a banner that said Ekdahl Boatworks, Sixty Years.

I wore the green dress I had bought for the clerk's office and never worn.

The ring on my left hand was Magnus's plain gold band.

My mother's ring was on the right.

The reporter stood by the stage with a notebook, and the newspaper lay folded under a hundred arms.

I felt every eye on me as I walked through.

Some of them were curious.

Some of them were hard.

Magnus found my hand in the crowd and held it.

"You're shaking," he said.

"So are you."

"I'm fine."

"Liar," I said, and he smiled.

At twenty past six a green hatchback pulled through the gate.

Trevor got out of the passenger side in a navy suit.

Shelby came around from the driver's side, with her hair pinned back off her face for the first time in the eight years I had known her.

The scar was bare, white and long under the lanterns.

I heard the crowd notice it.

Trevor didn't.

He walked straight up the steps of the stage and took the microphone from the harbormaster, who was too startled to stop him.

"Friends," he said. "Neighbors. Thank you for coming to my family's party."

"It's not your party," someone called.

He smiled at the dark.

"I've been called a liar this month," he said. "So I'll let the paper talk." He held up the front page. "Eight years ago my brother was convicted of a crash that put my best friend in a hospital bed. This week he bought himself a wife with sixty thousand dollars so he could take his father's yard."

A murmur ran through the crowd.

"The check cleared on Tuesday," Trevor said. "Ask the bank."

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