His Affection Meter Hit 100% novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eggs Benedict

At the club brunch the whole room has seen the video and Ainsley answers it calmly. She tells Lyle in front of everyone that she knows he sent it. Then Frankie collapses with a fever of 104.

The Gresham family had Sunday brunch at the Lakeview Club every week, and Heath's mother had never once let anyone skip it.

By the time we walked in, the video had been seen by everyone at every table.

I felt it before I saw it.

Conversations stopped, and forks stopped halfway to mouths.

Heath's hand found mine under the sleeve of my jacket.

"We can leave," he said quietly.

"We're not leaving," I said. "We're having eggs."

Heath's father sat at the head of the long table behind a newspaper he was not reading.

His mother put down her coffee.

"Ainsley, dear," she said. "We saw the video."

"So did everyone at the club, I think."

"A girl with any self-respect," his mother said, "would have packed a bag by now."

The table went still.

Heath opened his mouth, and I squeezed his fingers once under the tablecloth.

"I thought about it," I said. "Then I thought, he was drunk, he apologized, and he's sitting right here asking me for nothing."

I picked up the menu.

"The eggs benedict here is excellent. I'd hate to waste a reservation."

*AFFECTION: 52%.*

His mother stared at me and said nothing.

Across the table, a woman from Heath's old crowd leaned toward her neighbor and whispered, "She's in shock."

"She's not even angry," somebody else murmured. "That's worse."

I heard every word and kept my face still.

Last time I would have thrown the water pitcher.

I looked down the table and found Lyle.

He sat at the far end with a mimosa in one hand and his phone on the cloth beside his plate.

When our eyes met, he smiled and raised his glass at me.

It was a good smile, warm and sorry, the smile he'd given me at the party.

I excused myself, walked around the table, and stopped behind his chair.

"Lyle," I said.

Everyone nearby went quiet to listen.

"Hey, Ains. I'm so sorry about all this. If there's anything I can..."

"Whoever sent me that text last night knew which room to name," I said. "Second door on the left upstairs."

He kept smiling.

"Whoever filmed the doorway knew which door, too. And when I asked for the bathroom, you were the one who told me where to go."

"I was just being helpful."

"You were. You were very helpful."

I let that sit between us for a moment.

His phone lay face down beside the bread basket, and he did not touch it.

"I'm not accusing you of anything," I said. "I'm saying someone in this room wanted me to open that door. If I find out who, I'll thank them for the video. It saved me a lot of time."

Lyle laughed, too quickly.

"That's a wild thing to say at brunch."

"I'm a wild kind of girl," I said, and went back to my seat.

Heath's father lowered his newspaper by an inch.

He looked at Lyle, and then at me.

He raised the newspaper again without a word.

*AFFECTION: 55%.*

It was working better than screaming ever had.

That was when the door of the dining room banged open.

Frankie came in wearing a flannel shirt buttoned wrong, with her hair wet on her forehead.

She walked straight toward our table, and every head in the room turned to follow her.

"Heath," she said. "Heath, I need to..."

She stopped beside his chair and stared up at the empty air above his hair.

Her lips moved.

I watched her count under her breath.

Then her eyes slid to me and caught on my face, and I saw her go gray.

"Frankie," Heath said, half rising. "You look like hell."

"I'm fine."

"You're soaked."

"It's the heat."

It was a cool morning, and the club's windows were open.

She turned to me, and her voice dropped to nothing.

"Ainsley. I told you. Don't."

"I'm eating eggs," I said. "I'm not doing anything."

"You are. It's at fifty-five, and you're..."

She swayed.

Heath caught her under the arms, and a glass of juice slid off the table and shattered on the floor.

"Frankie!"

Her head dropped against his chest.

He put a hand on her forehead and jerked it back.

"She's burning up," he said. "Somebody call an ambulance."

A man I did not know knelt beside her and pressed two fingers to her neck.

"A hundred and four, easily," he said. "Get her flat on the floor."

Heath dropped to his knees beside her, white to the lips, and did not look at me once.

The whole dining room stood and stared.

Nobody was looking at the video anymore.

I stood, too, and the panel in my vision flickered.

*AFFECTION: 55%.*

*AFFECTION: 53%.*

In three years the number had never gone down for me.

I thought it was because Heath was holding another woman in his arms.

Then I remembered the way Frankie had counted under her breath, looking at that number before she ever touched him.

It had dropped the second she touched him.

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