Jilted at the Altar, I Married His Billionaire Uncle novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Chosen

I watched the clip four times on the bartender's phone.

Hayden at the gate, punching in his own code.

Hayden walking out of frame toward the hoist with his work bag.

Hayden coming back at 2:31, without hurrying, and driving away.

"Can you send me that?" I said.

"Already did," the bartender said. "Sent it to the police too. And your husband's office."

He stood up and patted my shoulder twice, awkwardly.

"That kid you knocked down comes in for root beer every Friday," he said. "He can't hold his drinks yet."

Then he went back across the street to his bar.

A detective came at three and took a copy and wrote things in a notebook.

Hayden had left by then, smiling at the cameras.

He called it "a sad attempt to smear a grieving family."

I didn't remember the drive home.

I remembered Anson's hands on the wheel, and how he kept looking over at me at red lights.

And the apprentice's face, white to the lips.

And the zipper sound of a sling letting go.

At the house I stood in the kitchen in my work boots and couldn't figure out what to do with my hands.

They were shaking.

They hadn't shaken on the steel. Not once.

They were shaking now, on a granite counter, on solid ground.

Anson put a glass of water in front of me.

"Drink."

I drank half of it and set it down.

"He was standing right there," I said. "The kid. I taught him how to plant his feet."

"He planted them exactly how I taught him, right under the load."

"And you got him out."

"By half a second."

"By half a second," he agreed. "That's enough. That's all it ever is."

He was standing across the island from me.

Not coming closer.

He hadn't come closer since the overlook, because I'd asked him not to.

I looked at him.

Dark shirt, sleeves rolled. Mud on his good shoes from the site. The washer on his finger.

The man who'd stood at that fence in front of five cameras today and said yes.

Just yes.

"I said not until I knew all of it," I said.

"I remember."

"I changed my mind."

He went very still.

"Reagan. You've had a day."

"I know what kind of day I've had." I came around the island. "I almost watched a nineteen-year-old die."

"I'm not waiting for perfect anymore. You can tell me the last thing when you can prove it."

I stopped in front of him.

Close enough to feel the heat of him.

"I'm not shaking because of you," I said. "I'm shaking because I'm alive, and I want to be alive with you."

"Tonight. That's my choice. Not gratitude. Not Hayden. Mine."

He looked down at me for a long moment.

"Say it plain," he said quietly. "So I don't have to guess."

"Yes. Take me upstairs."

He lifted me off my feet.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, boots and all, and he carried me up the old stairs.

Past the door on the left.

To the end of the hall, to his room.

He carried me through the door and didn't put me down.

Not until the backs of my thighs hit the foot of his bed and he let me slide down the length of him.

My boots hit the floor.

I kicked them off without looking.

He stood there.

Close enough that I could feel his breath.

Waiting.

"You carried me up a flight of stairs like I weigh nothing," I said.

"You don't weigh nothing. You weigh exactly right."

"Shut up and lose the shirt."

He pulled it over his head.

I got my hands on him before he'd dropped it.

Flat palms on his ribs, then up, over his chest.

He was warm.

Solid.

Built like a man who'd worked with his hands long before he signed checks with them.

And he let me look.

Gray eyes on mine, patient, like he'd wait all night if that's what I wanted.

"I've thought about this," I said. "In the hospital room at the courthouse. In my room down the hall."

"I know. I heard you that night when I walked past your door."

My face went hot.

"You didn't say anything."

"You would have stopped."

I dug my short nails into his chest, just enough to feel.

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