The Ex-Change novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Rundown

Callie's POV

I got back to the room at eleven and Jude wasn't in it.

His guitar case was by the wardrobe.

His jacket was over the chair.

The pillow wall was still on the bed, built in the afternoon, and I sat down beside it feeling stupid.

I had been cold to him all day, and he had not once been cold back.

At midnight I stood up and went to find him.

I checked the terrace, the kitchen and the dock, and the dock was dark and wet and empty, with forty candles burned down to nubs.

At the end of the back hall, a stone staircase led down into a cellar door that was standing open.

Light showed at the bottom.

Voices came up it, one low and one high.

I stopped three steps from the bottom with my hand flat on the cold wall.

"You read the rundown," said Lowen.

"It was lying there."

"It's lying there because I'm careless. I told myself that for a week." There was a dry scrape, a chair being dragged. "Sit, Jude. You'll want to be sitting."

"I'll stand."

"Fine. I'll tell it standing."

I leaned in and looked through the gap in the doorway.

Lowen Quinn was by the long table of monitors with her glasses in her hand and her headset around her neck.

Jude stood across from her, very still, with his fists loose at his sides.

"They came to me in April," Lowen said. "Colton Bevan and Vanessa Lowe. Together, with a pitch deck. They said they were friends who had both just been through a divorce, and they had an idea for a show."

"The Ex-Change."

"Their name, their format, their cast. I thought it was inspired. Two couples, swapped, a reality show about why love ends. The network had been dying, and I was desperate. I took the deck and I ran with it."

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