Finally Moving On After A Decade novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: After the Speakers

Freja's POV

I did not decide to move.

One second I was in the wing with a headset around my neck, and the next I was in the aisle with my arms out.

Lydia hit me instead of him.

Her nails went across my left cheek, four hot lines from the cheekbone to the jaw.

"Get out of my way!" she screamed.

"No," I said.

I had never said it so calmly in my life.

Nolan was behind me, close enough that I felt him there.

He didn't touch her, and he didn't touch me.

Six hundred people stood in their chairs with their phones up.

A hotel security guard reached us at a jog.

Then a woman pushed through the tables in a green coat, breathing hard.

It was Lydia's sister.

She stopped three feet away and looked at the screen, at the dates, and at the long thin scratches on my face.

"Lydia," she said. "I'm taking you home."

"You signed it. You signed the statement."

"I know I did." The sister's voice shook. "I never saw him touch you. I never saw him once. I wrote what you told me to write."

Lydia stared at her.

Then she let her sister take her by the elbow.

They walked up the center aisle through six hundred people, and nobody made a sound until the doors closed.

Nolan said, very quietly, behind me, "Freja, your face."

"It's a scratch."

"It's bleeding."

"I've bled for worse reasons." I turned around. "Don't. Don't take me home tonight."

His hand stopped halfway to my cheek.

"Not because of that," I said. "I'm so proud of you I could scream. But I've got twelve beds, six hundred donors and a board chair who is about to ask what I've done to her dinner."

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