I Sent My Husband Fake Cheating Proof, He Flew Home Overnight novel · Chapter 12 of 16

Chapter 12: The Walk-Up

The doorman tried to give me an umbrella.

I didn't take it.

I got in the first cab on Fifth Avenue and gave the driver Pippa's address.

I had her spare key and nowhere else to go.

The rain soaked my green dress through before I reached the fourth floor.

I sat on Pippa's kitchen floor with my back against the lemon-magnet fridge.

My phone lit up.

Christian.

I turned it over.

It lit up again.

Pippa.

"I'm sleeping at my boyfriend's. Don't hate me. Also he's downstairs."

I went to the window.

Christian was standing on the sidewalk four floors below in his black tux, with no coat and no umbrella, looking up.

The rain was running off his hair into his eyes.

He didn't buzz.

He didn't shout.

He just stood there.

I watched him for ten minutes.

He didn't move once.

Finally I opened the window and leaned out.

"You're going to get pneumonia."

"Then you'll have to visit me," he called up. "You'd hate that."

"Go home, Christian."

"Not without you."

"You can't just stand there all night."

"I flew across an ocean for you on no sleep," he said. "I can stand on a sidewalk."

The man in the apartment below Pippa's opened his window too.

"Oh my God, lady, let him up! Some of us have work!"

I buzzed him in.

He came up four flights and stood dripping in Pippa's doorway.

He didn't come in until I stepped back to let him.

"Talk," I said.

"When I saw the kettle, I almost turned the plane around," he said.

"I was so relieved I had to put it on autopilot for a minute."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Because I realized what it meant." He pushed his wet hair back.

"You didn't love somebody else. You just wanted out of me so badly that you'd rather I thought you were a cheat."

I had no answer to that.

"I thought I'd come home and sign," he said. "I had the pen in my hand at the airport."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Because you looked at me. In the kitchen. When I tore the papers." His voice dropped.

"You'd never looked at me like that. Like you wanted me to fight."

My throat went tight.

"So I fought. It was the only way you'd let me into your room. Into your life."

"The minute I said I knew, you'd have packed a bag."

"You let Portia hit me."

"I didn't know Portia would ever touch you." His face went dark. "If I had, she'd have been out of this city before the signing."

He stepped closer.

"I should have told you the second you cried in my study. I didn't. I was a coward."

"I wanted one more day of you not leaving."

"I did it because you never touched me," I said.

It came out cracked.

"Three years, Christian. I thought if I stayed one more year I'd disappear."

"I know that now."

"You made a promise to my father. You never made one to me."

He was quiet for a second.

Then he got down on one knee, right there on Pippa's yellow linoleum, soaking wet in a tuxedo.

"Then here's one," he said.

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