She Jumped Into His Pool and Blamed Me, So I Left Him novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Rail

The ring was big and square-cut, with a band of small stones, and it had cost more than my clinic paid me in two years.

Bennett held it up to me in the candlelight.

Behind him the terrace was so quiet I could hear the pool filter running.

"Valerie Marrin," he said, loud and warm. "Will you marry me?"

Two hundred phones rose into the air.

Somewhere to my left a woman said "Oh my God" in a whisper that carried.

I looked down at his face.

It was open and hopeful, and he was good at it.

"Say yes," he said, very low, under the sound of the quartet. "I've got you."

I took a breath.

"No," I said.

His smile did not move.

"Val."

"No, Bennett." I said it again, louder, so the back of the terrace could hear. "I won't marry you."

A murmur went through the guests.

He rose to his feet, still holding the ring, still smiling.

"She's overwhelmed," he told the crowd, and a few people laughed uncertainly. "It's been a long summer."

"I'm not overwhelmed."

"Sweetheart..."

"I know exactly when the complaint against me was filed," I said. "It was filed at 7:12 on the night I was accused, forty-five minutes before the fall."

The managing partner of the law firm, at table three, put down his fork.

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