A Life Beyond Us novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Three Rules

Hugh was sitting on the porch steps with his elbows on his knees when I came out the side door.

My hair was tied back and my blouse was buttoned wrong, and I knew he could tell.

He looked at the fence instead of at me, and I was grateful.

I sat down one step above him.

"Say it," I told him.

"After Tom passed out, I went after Darcy."

"Out to the parking lot."

"She was sitting in her car with the dome light on, looking at her phone. She'd recorded the whole night on it. Tom crying, Tom talking, everything he said about you."

"Including what he said about you."

"Including that." Hugh kept his eyes on the fence. "She told me she was going to send it to you the next morning."

"And you stopped her."

"I begged her. I was twenty-eight and I had two thousand dollars in my checking account, and I stood by her car and begged."

"How much did you pay her?"

"All of it. I took it out of the ATM by the gas station and put it in her hand. She said she'd delete the file."

"She didn't."

"I know that now." He took out his phone and showed me a text from an hour ago.

It was a photo of a receipt, a withdrawal slip from six years back with his name at the top and the amount circled in red pen.

Under it she had written: "Everyone will wonder what a man pays for."

I stared at it until the numbers blurred.

"Why did you do it?"

"Because you'd just been divorced," Hugh said. "Because you were finally getting your life together, and Tom was a wreck, and I thought if you heard what he said, you'd go back to him out of pity. Or you wouldn't. Either way I didn't want you hurt."

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