System Erased Her From My Memory novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: What She Owes

Nobody moved.

The recorder was still warm in my hand.

Delaney came one step into the kitchen and stopped on the edge of the rug.

"You read my phone," she said.

"Yes."

"You saw it, and you got dressed, and you walked me down a chapel aisle anyway." Her voice was almost a whisper. "You looked at me at the doors, and I thought, he's disgusted with me. And you were."

"I was never disgusted."

"You erased me."

"I did."

She started to laugh.

It wasn't the low, rude laugh from the bus stop.

It was a high, cracked sound that frightened Finn into standing up.

"Six months," she said. "Six months I told everybody it was a game. I waited every night for you to crack and kneel, and you couldn't, because you'd already done it to yourself."

"Delaney."

"You loved me." She pressed her palm flat against her chest. "You said it right there on that thing. You loved me. So come back."

The word hung in the kitchen.

I felt it go through me, and I knew exactly what the man on the recorder would have done.

He would have said yes.

"No," I said.

Her face went still.

"You heard what I said. I loved you."

"Past tense."

"I remember loving you. I'm not going to lie and say I don't." I set the recorder on the table. "That doesn't make me yours. I'm married. I picked her without a single memory of you, and it wasn't a mistake."

"You picked her because you couldn't remember!"

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