Chapter 14: Forty Dollars

Hanne's POV

I threw the two twenties at his chest.

They bounced off his jacket and fell in the slush between his boots.

Dylan looked down at them.

"Forty dollars," I said. "I've kept it in my pocket for a week so I could do that."

"That was the plan?"

"It was the entire plan."

He bent and picked the bills up out of the slush, one at a time, and held them out.

I didn't take them.

"Keep them," I said. "I'm done paying you for what you didn't charge. And you're done sneaking my money back into my coat."

"Deal."

"I don't want a rule about who owes who. I want to say what I want and have you say what you want, and I don't want either of us keeping score."

"I can do that."

"And you never decide what I get to know again."

"Never," he said. "Not even if Ingrid begs."

I was shaking, and it wasn't the cold.

I had torn up my father's apology twenty minutes before, and now a man was standing in a parking lot offering to be honest with me.

It felt like too much good at once.

"I'm still angry," I said.

"I know."

"It might take me a while to be less angry."

"I'm not going anywhere," Dylan said. "I took four days off. I'm in the Holiday Inn by the lake with the cheap towels."

"I'm not going to the house tonight."

"Then you're in the Holiday Inn too."

Erik drove himself home in my father's truck with his eyes red.

Mom had not come out to the lot.

We checked in separately.

I paid for my room in cash, from the pocket of Erik's old coat, and the desk clerk counted the bills twice.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Booked Four Seats Without Me, So I Booked One to California from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.