He Traded Me for My Sister Twice, But I Planned the Second Time novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Mind the Third Step

Leland admits he remembers and begs; Imogen refuses and is driven home by Simon's driver while her father fires her.

Leland caught up with me at the bottom of the hotel steps.

He had left his jacket inside, and his tie hung loose.

"Answer my message," he said.

"I read it."

"Then you know." He stepped in front of me, close enough that the doorman looked away. "The dock. The warehouse. I remember all of it, Imogen."

I kept my face still.

In the first life he had never once said sorry.

"You remember leaving me there," I said.

"I remember coming back and finding it empty." His voice cracked. "I remember what the police told me."

"You came back too late."

"I came back as fast as the money let me."

"You came back after you drove Cecily to the clinic for a bruise."

He flinched, and I knew I had the order right.

"I chose wrong," he said. "I know I did. Give me this second chance and I'll fix it. We'll marry this month. I'll tell your father tonight."

"No."

"Imogen."

"You deleted my video, Leland."

He opened his mouth and shut it.

"If you'd chosen me, you'd have watched it," I said. "You didn't need to be told that Hugh could walk. You already knew."

He looked at the ground.

That was all the answer I needed.

"Hugh lies for Cecily because he loves her," he said at last. "He isn't dangerous."

"He's the reason I died."

"What?"

I had said too much.

Before he could ask again, a black car slid up to the curb beside us.

The back window came down.

The man from the door looked out at me.

Up close he was older than I had thought, perhaps thirty-three, with short dark hair and tired eyes.

"Miss Ferrell," he said. "My driver can take you home."

"I'll take her," Leland said.

"She has the right to say no," the man said, without raising his voice.

Leland turned to me.

I had spent my whole first life saying yes to Leland, and my whole first death waiting for him.

I opened the car door and got in.

The seat was warm, and the door shut with a soft, expensive click.

Leland stood on the curb with his hands open at his sides.

"You know my name," I said, as the car pulled out.

"Simon Rathbone." He held out a card. "Rathbone Capital. Your mother and I knew each other."

My mother had died four years ago, and I had never heard him mentioned.

"She never said."

"She wouldn't have." He did not push the card at me, only laid it on the seat between us. "I won't ask where you're going. But I'll drive you there."

"You told me about the step."

"It's been loose since spring."

"You told me to mind it before I had put a foot on it."

"I saw the heel of your shoe on the last two steps," he said. "You walk fast when you're upset."

It sounded reasonable.

I let it sound reasonable.

I looked out of the window at the lights going by and gave the driver my address.

The apartment I shared with Leland was still mine for now, on the fourteenth floor of a building my father had helped finance.

At the lobby doors Simon's driver stopped, and Simon himself got out to open mine.

"You'll want to sleep somewhere else tonight," he said.

"Why?"

"Because your fiancé has a key."

"Ex-fiancé," I said.

"Ex-fiancé," he agreed, and I thought I saw something move at the corner of his mouth.

I took the card.

"Is that an offer?"

"It's a number," he said. "I'd like you to have it."

I went upstairs, packed a bag in six minutes, and left Leland's key on the kitchen counter.

On the way out my phone lit up in my hand.

It was my father, who never texted.

"Your sister has been crying for an hour," it said. "As of tonight you no longer work at Ferrell Foods. Don't bother coming to the office tomorrow."

I stood in the lobby with my bag on my shoulder and read it twice.

In my first life he had waited until the funeral to cut me off.

This time he had not even waited until midnight.

I called the number on the card.

It rang once.

"Rathbone," said Simon.

"I need somewhere to sleep tonight," I said. "And I need you not to ask why."

"I won't," he said. "Where are you standing?"

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