She Kept the Trash, I Kept the Crown novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Same Table

The ballroom of the Hartley Hotel had been the last room I ever saw.

I stood at its doors in a white dress, and I made myself walk in.

Four hundred guests were already seated at round tables under three chandeliers.

The noise hit me all at once.

I closed my hand around the brass watch and counted the ticks until the noise became voices, and the voices became sentences, and I could breathe again.

"Look at me," Kellan said.

I looked.

He was in black tie, with the spare pen in his inside pocket and his hand warm at the small of my back.

"Say it."

"I'm here," I said. "I'm alive. I'm in a white dress, not a green one."

"And?"

"And I have you."

"Good." He brushed a kiss across my knuckles. "I'll be four tables away. Felix has the phone."

Across the room, Felix lifted a hand from the Slade table.

He had a watch on each wrist and a phone propped against his water glass, and a small blue dot glowed on its screen.

The dot was the tag in the orange case, and the case was in my bag.

I took my seat at the head table between Dr. Wheelock and Mrs. Wheelock.

I put the bag on the floor against my ankle, with my foot through the strap.

"Where is your sister?" Dr. Wheelock asked, very low.

"I don't know."

"I did not invite her. The committee seated her."

"Where?"

He glanced toward the Slade table.

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