At a Charity Auction, My Husband Sold My Best Friend the Seven Days He Promised Me novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Chloe

Evan's POV

I have delivered, by my own count, forty-one babies in the back of an emergency room.

I had never once been the man holding the hand.

At two in the morning on the nineteenth of May, I stood beside a bed on the labor floor.

I wore a borrowed pair of scrubs, and my hands did not know what to do.

"Evan."

"Here."

"Stop hovering."

"I'm not hovering. I'm standing."

"You're hovering like a doctor." Bethany gripped the rail and breathed through it with her eyes shut, and her knuckles went white. "Hold my hand instead."

I took it.

She squeezed hard enough to hurt, and I was grateful.

When the contraction let go, she opened her eyes and reached with her free hand into the tote bag on the chair.

She pulled out a thick manila envelope with tape across the flap, creased and soft from being handled.

"I want you to read this," she said. "Before she's born."

"Beth, you're in labor."

"I'm in labor for hours, the nurse said. I opened it in December. I didn't tell you what's in it, because I wanted to see whether you'd ask."

"I didn't want to push."

"I know," she said. "That's the whole reason I'm giving it to you."

I opened it with one hand.

Inside was a signed legal waiver, and a single sheet of lined paper in Neil's square writing.

The waiver said he gave up every parental right, now and in the future.

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