The Billionaire Married a Homeless Girl novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Tally Marks

I did not speak to him in the car, or in the front hall, or at dinner.

Benji talked enough for all three of us.

He told Nolan that a stegosaurus had a brain the size of a lime, and Nolan said that explained a lot of his board meetings.

I almost smiled into my soup, and I hated that I almost did.

After dinner I took my pillow to the guest room next to Benji's and shut the door.

I turned the lock.

It was the lock I'd asked for, in the terms I'd set in a hallway, and now I heard it click.

At eleven there was a knock.

"Go away," I said through the wood.

"I'm not coming in."

"Good."

"I'm going to say something through the door, and then I'm going to go to bed, and I won't knock again."

I sat on the edge of the mattress with my arms around my knees.

"Fine."

"You're right. I stopped."

I closed my eyes.

"I told myself I couldn't find you. I had a private detective on retainer, a security chief and a lawyer. In one afternoon any of them could have pulled your name from a bus station log. I didn't ask because I was afraid of what I'd find."

"What would you have found?"

"A girl who'd hated me for a month."

"I would have."

"Yes."

"I would have hated you for a month, and then I would have let you hold him."

I heard him breathe out against the door.

"I'm not asking you to forgive it," he said. "I'm telling you what I'll do with the rest of my life. I gave a statement to the Post-Gazette at six tonight."

I opened my eyes.

"Read it tomorrow. It says I stopped searching because I believed a photograph. It says my son slept in a car for eleven weeks in my city, and that I was too much of a coward to look. It has my name on the bottom, and my photo, and no lawyer's edits."

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