He Didn't Know She Was the Heiress novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: Eleven Years
I let Becca into the blue guest room and shut the door.
She sat on the edge of the bed in her gray robe, and I stood against the dresser with my arms folded.
The fire had burned low.
"Say it," I said. "All of it."
"Lena..."
"Since when?"
Becca looked at her hands.
"Since your first anniversary. You were on a night shift, and Ethan came by my apartment to drop off your gift because you'd forgotten it at the hospital. It happened that night." Her mouth shook. "I told myself once."
"And after the once?"
"I told myself that for a year."
Maisie was five.
I did the arithmetic standing there.
"So when you cried at my table about the coward who left you," I said, "you were crying about my husband."
"I was crying about me."
"For five years you let me tell you how brave you were."
"I know."
"I bought her a crib, Becca. I sat in that waiting room while she was born. I paid for her first six months of daycare and you said it was a loan."
"I know what you did."
Her voice rose, and she stopped, and dropped it to a whisper.
"I know what you did for me. Do you think I don't lie awake? You were the only person who ever showed up, and I was taking from you the whole time."
"Then why?"
She was quiet for a long moment.
"Because you never needed anything," she said. "You had a good job and a nice husband and a sweet little life, and I was thirty minutes away drowning. I told myself you wouldn't miss him."
Keep reading free with an account. Start He Didn't Know She Was the Heiress from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.
← Chapter 7 · All chapters · Chapter 9 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend