He Let Her Rip Our License, So I Married Another Man novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Seven Hours

Benedict's POV

She didn't say anything until we were in the car.

I drove because I wanted my hands busy.

The ballroom lights shrank in the mirror, and she sat with her dress bunched in her lap and her eyes on the road.

"Say it," she said.

"Which part?"

"All of it. You promised we wouldn't lie."

I had thought about this for a year.

I had practiced it in the shower, in the office, in the car outside her building.

None of what I'd practiced came out.

"Last Thanksgiving I flew home from London," I said. "My plane was delayed. I came through arrivals at about three in the afternoon."

She did not look at me.

"I saw a woman in a plastic chair with her coat across her knees. She was watching the board. I knew her face, because my grandmother had shown me a photograph after you left the voicemail."

"You recognized me."

"Yes."

"You walked past."

"I stopped."

She turned her head then.

"I bought two teas at the kiosk," I said. "I was going to walk over and introduce myself. I thought, after three years, I could at least say I was sorry about the dinner."

"And?"

"You got up and went to the restroom. While you were gone, I looked at the board you'd been watching."

"The flight number was fake."

"I saw that in a minute. Nobody was coming. I only knew a man had told you something that wasn't true."

My voice wasn't steady.

I kept my eyes on the road.

"I left a cup of tea on your seat," I said. "I stepped behind a pillar. You came back and found it and looked around. Then you drank it."

"I thought a stranger had been kind."

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