My Loving Family Paid to Destroy Me novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Laurel's POV: The Rule

Laurel's POV

The night before the gala, Nolan came home with a rented tuxedo in a garment bag.

I had never heard myself think the word home about that room.

I stood at the hot plate stirring soup and listened to him hang the bag on my nail, right beside my scrub top.

The two black shapes swung together and settled.

"The detective has my mother's key now," he said. "His people open the lake house safe at noon tomorrow, while my father is at the Harbor Club shaking hands."

"And if the safe is empty?"

"My mother says it isn't."

"Your mother says a lot of things."

"She's said more in one week than in my whole life," said Nolan. "I believe her."

I turned the burner off.

I had planned a speech.

I had planned to tell him to keep his eyes on the stage.

I had planned to say, keep your hands off the pen and his hand off your shoulder.

Instead I said, "Tell me what you'll do if he cries."

"Who?"

"Your father."

His face went still.

"He will," I said. "He'll cry in front of the guests."

"He'll say he made a mistake and he loved you."

"And he'll put his hand on your shoulder the way he has your whole life."

I kept my back to the stove.

I did not want to see the answer on his face.

"What do you do, Nolan?"

I had asked him that question in the dark for five years.

I had asked it in the truck at the bottom of the hill.

I had asked it in the diner lot, sixty times.

Every time, the answer in my head had been the same.

He would take the hand.

He crossed the floor and stood in front of me.

"I take it off," he said.

"Just like that."

"I take it off, and I put it back at his side. And then I say your name into the microphone, Laurel, not his."

My eyes stung.

"That's not a plan."

"No."

"That's a promise."

"Then I've made one." He lifted my hands off the spoon and held them. "I'm sorry."

I went still.

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