Not Enough Support From My Husband, His Best Friend Stepped In novel · Chapter 16 of 16
Chapter 16: Stepped In
The microphone was still warm from his hand.
I looked down at him.
"Get up, Dalton," I said.
He didn't.
So I said the rest of it with him on his knee, because that's where he'd chosen to be.
"I never needed your money, Dalton. I still don't."
I could hear my voice going out over the whole room.
He shut his eyes.
"You sent eighty thousand dollars a month to a house you never came home to," I said. "You never once came to see what it bought."
Nobody in the room moved.
"So no. I'm not coming home."
I held the microphone out to him.
"I'm sorry about your party."
He took it without looking at it.
Then he stood, slowly, and stepped aside to let me pass.
I walked down the three steps.
I walked through the four hundred people and nobody laughed and nobody said a word.
Ingrid was standing by her table with the brass key still in her fist.
As I passed, she put out her other hand and touched my arm.
Only for a second.
At the doors I stopped and looked back.
Shane was still on the stage.
He looked at Dalton.
Dalton looked at him.
Then Dalton nodded once and turned away toward the windows.
Shane came down the steps and across the room to me.
He didn't take my hand in front of all of them.
He just held the door.
In the elevator, all the way down forty-two floors, neither of us said anything.
In the lobby, two police officers were standing by the security desk.
Marissa sat on a bench between them in her white gown.
She looked up when the elevator opened.
I walked past her and out into the cold.
Marissa took a plea in July.
She'd spent most of the money on the Newbury Street boutiques and a leased white Range Rover.
The judge made her sell the gown.
It sold at auction for a fraction of what he'd paid.
Dalton had the check sent straight to Poppy's college fund.
The divorce took until August.
Dalton didn't fight any of it.
He gave me the Brookline house. I sold it to a surgeon and his husband and never went back inside.
I was still in Shane's guest room when the final papers came.
All spring and summer he'd kept to his side of the wall.
He cooked. He walked Poppy up and down the hall at three in the morning so I could sleep.
He never once came through my door.
The decree came in the mail on a Thursday in August.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–8 of Not Enough Support From My Husband, His Best Friend Stepped In are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend