After I Learned I Was Going to Be His Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: No Card

He went off the end of the dock.

Benedict went after him.

I had never seen Benedict run. Not for a cab, not for a plane.

He ran.

The driver cut through the service gate and out onto Wabash, under the L tracks.

A train was pulling into the station overhead.

He took the stairs three at a time and slipped through the doors as they closed.

Benedict hit the platform two seconds later.

The train pulled away with the driver's face in the back window, looking at us.

I caught up a full minute after, holding my side.

"Did you just," I said, "chase a man up the L stairs in a three-piece suit?"

"Yes."

"You're not even out of breath."

"I'm extremely out of breath. I'm hiding it."

[HE RAN]

[the fridge RAN]

[I didn't know the hero had legs. the book only describes his jaw]

We walked back to the dock.

The box he'd dropped had split down the side.

It was full of shirts from the hotel laundry, folded in white tissue.

Every one had EN embroidered on the cuff.

"He was taking Edmund's laundry home," I said.

"He takes everything home for Edmund," Benedict said. "I just never asked what."

I called the detective from the loading dock.

She listened to the whole thing without a word.

"So now he knows you know," she said.

"Yes."

"Which means Edmund knows by lunch."

"Probably."

There was a long, tired breath on the line.

"Ms. Fowler. I asked you not to do anything stupid."

"You asked me to define it. I'm still working on it."

That night, the penthouse had seven people, a cat and a houseplant in it, and every one of them was awake.

The twins made a cake for the croissant girl, a lopsided one, and wrote her channel name on it in gel.

Our accent man did the driver's escape as a nature documentary.

"And here we see the lesser henchman," he whispered, in a perfect British naturalist, "fleeing up the stairs of the Green Line."

"Observe how he does not look back. He has seen the detective's trench coat. He knows."

Zelda fell off the sofa laughing.

The new kid did the dropped box with a cushion, and Columbo attacked it.

Benedict sat at the end of the dining table watching all of it, with a glass of wine he forgot to drink.

At one point I looked over, and he was laughing. Head back. Out loud. In a room full of people.

Nobody made anything of it, which is the nicest thing a room can do.

At midnight the house finally went quiet.

← Chapter 19 · All chapters · Chapter 21 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend