Borrow My Seat novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Other Wife

I told her eight fifty-two, in the lobby.

I chose the time on purpose.

At 8:50 the next morning I stood by the glass doors with a coffee I wasn't drinking.

Tobias stood on the mezzanine rail above me with his arms crossed.

At 8:52 the doors opened.

Chantal came in alone.

She wore jeans and a plain gray sweater, her hair in a loose knot, with no hoops and no sash.

She had a laptop bag over one shoulder and nothing in her hands.

The receptionist watched her cross the floor.

Chantal stopped ten feet from me.

"I left my phone with the security guard," she said. "He wouldn't take the laptop. He said it was a laptop."

"He's right."

"I know." Her voice was very small. "Can I put the bag on the desk?"

"Please."

She set it down and unzipped it, and I saw a hard drive, a manila folder, and a stack of stapled pages.

Her hands weren't steady.

"I deleted my channel at three this morning," she said.

"Four hundred and ten thousand followers."

"It kept asking if I was sure."

"Were you?"

"No."

She said it so honestly that I almost smiled.

"I wrote letters to the packaging firm and the ad agency yesterday," she said.

"I signed my own name."

"I told them I planned it with a group chat, and that nothing you did was true."

She held out two printed pages.

I read the first paragraph of each.

They were plain and short and they had no jokes in them.

"They'll probably say you're lying to help me," I said.

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