He Got Engaged During My Labor, So I Chose His Rival novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Why I Didn't Look

I did not get out of the Corolla.

I rolled my window down and held out my hand for the card.

The driver gave it to me, and I turned it over and started writing on the back.

"Mrs. Holloway," he said. "Mr. McClintock is waiting."

"Mr. McClintock sent a car for twenty miles with no deposit," I said. "That's a trip, and trips have rates."

I wrote: *Twenty miles each way, forty total, at seventy cents. Twenty-eight dollars. Payable to Lyle Baumann, for gravel.*

"Gravel?" the driver said.

"Your tires were on his shoulder."

I handed it back.

"Tell him I'll take a word in writing," I said. "I have a pediatrician."

Lyle pulled out around the town car with great dignity and the plastic crackling under all of us.

In the back seat Zach was looking at me.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," he said. "I've just never wanted to be invoiced so badly."

Gus was perfect at the pediatrician.

He gained a pound and a half, and the doctor said he had his father's calm, which she could not have known, and which made Zach turn and study a poster of the digestive system for a full minute.

That night the cameras were gone from the road.

Zach and I sat on the garage steps with a monitor between us, and Lyle's porch light humming across the yard.

"Can I ask you something," he said. "And you don't have to put it on the napkin."

"Ask."

"The day I came to Lyle's fence. You knew me."

"Yes."

"You looked right at me and said the baby was the neighbor's."

"I did."

He turned his hat over in his hands.

← Chapter 14 · All chapters · Chapter 16 →

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