My First Love Returned, His Stand-In Begged Me to Stay novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: What Kip Owed

Kip's POV

"Say it as many times as you like," I told my aunt.

Constance stood between the dumpsters in her camel coat and her pearl earrings, and she looked at me without blinking.

"Be careful," she said.

"I've been careful for ten years."

"You've been well paid for ten years."

"For what? For sitting in a hallway?"

I heard my own voice, harder than I'd ever let it get with her.

"My mother's surgery," Constance said. "Her roof. The loan I co-signed for your workshop. The house I hold in my name, so no creditor can touch it. All of that came from one afternoon when you kept your mouth shut."

"I know what it cost."

"Do you? Because if you say a word to that girl, I'll have the keys to your mother's house by Monday, and the workshop goes to the bank."

"She is not a girl. She's twenty-eight, and she's smarter than both of us."

"Then she'll be smart enough to take the VanAlen son who can give her a life."

I almost laughed.

"Monty can't read her a bedtime story."

Constance's eyes went flat.

"Careful," she said again, very softly.

I walked away from her. It was the first time in ten years I'd done that.

I sat in my truck outside the library with the engine off.

My hands were shaking on the wheel.

I looked at the left one, at the ridge across the palm.

She had put her thumb on that scar once, in the dark, and asked what it was.

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