Call Me By Your Heart novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Everyone Watching

By nine that night Jamie was back in his bed at St. Luke's.

A judge had signed an emergency order from her kitchen table, keeping him in the hospital until a hearing.

The doctor restarted his chemotherapy herself.

I sat beside the bed with his small hand in mine and listened to the monitor beep.

He fell asleep with his head turned toward me.

Scott stood at the window, watching the parking lot.

"They're down there," he said.

I went to look.

Under the lights at the front entrance there were four news vans now, and a crowd of people with phones.

On the biggest screen, hung over the lobby TV, I saw my own face.

It was my work ID photo, with my hair in a bad braid.

The words under it ran across the bottom of the screen in red.

CLEANER WHO SOLD HER BABY?

My stomach dropped.

"Delilah's people gave them the check," Scott said. "They had it on every network before we left the lawn."

"They didn't show her squeezing him."

"No." His hand closed around the window frame. "They cut that."

My phone had been buzzing in my pocket for an hour.

I took it out.

Four hundred messages, and a thousand comments under a video of me running across the grass.

Gold digger.

Baby seller.

She doesn't deserve him.

I put the phone away with my hands shaking.

"Wait here," Scott said.

"Where are you going?"

"Down there."

He kissed my forehead, quick and rough, and left.

I watched through the glass as he walked out of the front doors into the lights.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Call Me By Your Heart from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.