Water Broke at Midnight, Husband Waited for Her BFF's Hair, Baby's New Daddy Didn't novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Ten Minutes Left

I gave Tilly to my father and went down the back stairs in my socks.

Greg had opened his door.

He stood in the light with his arms crossed, and Rhonda stood just behind his shoulder.

Lacey looked small on the step below them.

Her hair dripped onto the motel robe and the cold concrete, and her bare feet were blue.

"Greg," she said. "Please."

"No."

"I haven't asked yet."

"You were going to ask for ten minutes."

She held her phone up in both hands, with the screen turned toward him.

*We've decided to end our partnership, effective immediately.*

"My sponsor dropped me," she said. "Eleven thousand people unfollowed in the first hour. My landlord changed the locks. The motel says my card was declined."

Her voice cracked on the last word.

"I don't have anywhere to go."

"You have a car," Greg said.

"It's out of gas."

"Then you have a gas station."

She laughed, and it broke in the middle and turned into a sob.

"I just need to sit down. Ten minutes on your couch. Rhonda, tell him."

Rhonda did not move.

"You forgave me before," Lacey said. "You forgave me and we were friends again for a whole year. You were nice to me for a whole year."

"I did," Rhonda said quietly. "I forgave you, and we had a year, and then I watched you start in on my next friend. I thought if I forgave you right, it would stop you."

"I never meant..."

"I know. That's what scares me. You never mean it."

Lacey turned to me.

Her eyes were red, and wet, and real.

I could see both Laceys at once, the one who had cried in the towel and the one who knew how to do it.

"Mar," she said. "You'd understand. You know what it's like to have no one. You said it yourself. We had that. You and me."

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