Not His Wife novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: What It Costs
The guards walked Alyssa out through the side doors, and she went.
The ballroom came back to life behind her, two hundred people talking at once.
Reed still sat on the stage steps with his trophy on its side.
Joyce stood over him with her hand on his shoulder and did not look at me.
Bernice came up the stairs, took the microphone out of my hands, and set it on the podium.
"Go find him," she said.
"Who?"
"Don't insult me in front of a room."
I found him under the hotel awning at the front entrance, in the rain, without his umbrella.
Alyssa's car was pulling away from the curb.
He watched its taillights until they turned the corner.
"She means it," I said. "She'll sign tonight. Every page."
"She means the first half of it."
"Three years you've wanted that signature."
"Yes."
"So say it."
He turned to look at me.
"Say what?"
"How much you want it. What you'd pay."
My voice came out flat, and I let it.
I needed to hear the answer from his own mouth, in the rain, with nobody to perform for.
"All I own," he said. "For three years I'd have paid all of it."
"Then it's a small ask. One sentence on a page, and you're free."
"Ivy."
"I'd have to say I signed that deed myself. That Alyssa and I settled it like friends."
"You'd have to say that."
"And you could marry anyone you liked."
"I could," Anson said.
He took a step closer, into the light from the doors.
"I'd rather stay married to her until I'm sixty."
I did not say anything.
"She wants your name on a lie, and she wants it from you because she knows how much I want out," he said. "She's put a price on you. I'll never pay it."
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