How to Say Our Final Goodbye novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Fine
Clem wakes one month before her wedding, mid-plea from her father, says fine, and names a billion dollars and a severance; he orders her out of the country, and she turns to find her fiancé in the doorway.
"Clem, I'm not asking you to give Kirsten your engagement for nothing. I'll make it up to you, I swear."
My father's voice came through a ringing in my ears.
The last thing I remembered was snow.
Snow, and headlights, and the crunch of my own body on a road outside an airport hotel at five in the morning.
Then a white Porsche stopping ten feet past me.
My half-sister getting out in a fur coat, looking down at me, and getting back in.
Now I was sitting at the long walnut table in the dining room in Lake Forest.
There was a plate of cold salmon in front of me.
The grandfather clock in the hall said 8:40.
I looked at the calendar on my phone.
Friday, June 12.
One month before my wedding.
I was twenty-four again, and I was alive, and my father was leaning across the table with the exact same face he'd worn the first time.
Earnest. Wounded. A good man asking his difficult daughter for one small thing.
The first time, I'd cried.
I'd said yes because he promised to make it up to me.
He never did.
"Clem? Are you listening?"
My stepmother sat at the far end of the table, turning her wine glass by the stem.
Kirsten sat beside her in a pale pink dress, her phone face down by her plate for once.
She was watching me with big wet blue eyes.
She was so good at that.
Behind me, one of the housekeepers had frozen with the water pitcher.
The other was pretending to straighten the sideboard.
"Fine," I said.
My voice came out rough.
Everybody at the table looked up at once.
My father's whole face lit up.
"Clem. Sweetheart. I knew you'd come around."
He reached across to pat my hand.
I moved it.
"I'm not finished."
I took my time.
I tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear and picked up my water glass.
My hand didn't shake at all.
That surprised me more than anything.
"I want one billion dollars," I said.
The stepmother's glass hit the table.
"A billion?" My father's face went red, then darker than red. "Have you lost your mind?"
"And a signed paper that says we're done. Legally. You won't be my father and I won't be your daughter."
The room went very quiet.
The housekeeper with the pitcher set it down without a sound and didn't move again.
Kirsten put her hand over her mouth.
"Clemmie," she whispered. "How can you say that to Daddy?"
"Don't call me that."
Only my mother had ever called me that.
My father stood up so fast his chair scraped the floor.
He pointed at me across the salmon and the silver.
"You ungrateful little brat. Do you hear yourself?"
"I hear myself fine."
I looked straight at him.
"You were sleeping with her mother while my mother was five months pregnant. Mom found you at the lake house and drove home in the rain, and she hit a tree on Sheridan Road. She died. My brother died with her."
The stepmother's mouth went thin.
"That was an accident," she said.
"You married him six months later," I said. "In her garden."
Nobody said anything to that.
"You stopped being my father that night," I told him. "You've only had one daughter since. Her."
I nodded at Kirsten without looking at her.
"Now you want my fiancé for her too. So what's the difference if we make it official?"
My father's chest was heaving.
"A billion dollars and the paper," I said. "Those are my terms. I'm not taking less. Do we have a deal or not?"
He stared at me for a long time.
I'd seen him close deals in rooms full of men who hated him.
He looked at me the way he looked at them.
Then he smiled, slow, with all his teeth.
That should have scared me.
The first time around, it would have.
"Fine," he said. "We're done. And you'll get your money. It'll take a few weeks to pull together."
"Good."
"But I have one condition of my own."
He walked around the table and stopped right beside my chair.
He smelled like the same cologne he'd worn my whole life.
"Wyeth Wainscott is obsessed with you," he said. "Everyone in this city knows it. I won't have him making a scene at Kirsten's wedding over you."
Kirsten made a small hurt noise.
"So you'll pack your bags," my father said. "You'll be out of the country by the morning of the wedding. And you'll never come back."
The morning of July 11.
The day before my twenty-fifth birthday.
I almost laughed.
Of course that was the date.
My heart was pounding, and not only because of the deadline.
Obsessed with me.
I thought of Wyeth standing beside Kirsten on a TV screen, three years from now, in a dark suit, not smiling.
I thought of him in this same house the first time, hearing that I wanted out, and saying only, "If that's what Clem wants."
Just that.
Then he married her.
"Wyeth doesn't care about me," I said. "He never did. You can stop worrying."
"Then you won't mind leaving."
"I won't mind at all."
I held out my hand.
My father looked at it.
Then he shook it, in front of his wife, his daughter and two women who'd worked in this house for ten years.
"Deal," he said.
Kirsten smiled down at her lap, satisfied.
I pushed my chair back and stood up.
I turned around to leave.
Wyeth Wainscott was standing in the dining room doorway.
He was still in his navy suit from work, a set of car keys in his hand.
He hadn't been announced.
He'd been there long enough.
His dark eyes moved from my father, to Kirsten, to me.
"A billion dollars," he said quietly. "That's my price?"
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