They Thought My Mate Chose Her novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Truth First

"Tell them," I said. "I'm going to."

Tressa's smile faltered.

She'd been ready for me to beg.

I locked the shop with her still standing on the sidewalk.

I got in my mother's old Buick and drove north out of town, past the lake road, to the boatyard at Lac La Belle.

The boatyard sat at the bottom of a gravel hill on the edge of the little lake.

A slipway ran down into black water with a skin of ice at the edges.

Cador was halfway inside an outboard engine on a stand, in a flannel shirt with the sleeves shoved up.

He heard the Buick and came out wiping his hands on a rag.

He stopped where he was, six feet off, the way he'd stopped on the loading dock the night of the Choosing.

"Something wrong?"

I took the deed out of my apron and held it out.

He read it with grease on his thumbs.

"I told him I'd think about it," I said. "To get him out of my front room. Tressa heard every word, so by supper the house will think I'm packing."

He was quiet.

"Are you?" he asked.

"No."

"You'd own your mother's building outright, Wenna. No rent. No Hockings at your counter, ever." He held the deed out to me, carefully, by the edge. "That's a real thing. I'm not going to stand here and tell you it isn't."

"You're supposed to beg me not to go."

"Would it work?"

"No."

"Then I won't waste your morning." The corner of his mouth moved. "I'd like it on the record, though, that I really want to."

I laughed.

I hadn't meant to.

"Keep it," I said, pushing the deed back at him. "It's got his signature on it. It's a bribe in his own hand."

He folded it and put it in his shirt pocket over his heart.

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