He Played Husband for Her Dare, So I Left Carrying His Baby novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Gala

The ballroom at the Harbor Club held three hundred people, and every one of them was looking at the stage.

I stood at the back, in the green gown, with Wren's hand tucked under my elbow.

Nobody had noticed us come in.

Owen stood at the podium in a black tuxedo, with a glass of water at his hand and a screen behind him that read Harborside Hope Gala.

The head table was set just below him.

I had walked past it on my way in, between the soup and the speeches, while everyone watched the stage.

On Owen's plate, on the folded white napkin, I had laid a sandwich bag.

It held three pregnancy tests, and every one showed two pink lines.

No one had stopped me.

Delia sat three seats from the empty chair, in dark blue silk, and she had not looked up when I went by.

"Thank you," Owen was saying. "Thank you all."

His voice was warm and steady.

I had heard him use it a hundred times.

"This is my fifth year chairing the Hope Walk. Five years ago, my wife and I started our own journey, and it was not an easy one."

A murmur of sympathy went through the room.

"Four years of treatments. Four years of hope, and then of loss. I held her every time."

He let that sit.

"People ask me how I did it. I tell them it wasn't a sacrifice. When you love someone, you carry what they can't. I read every letter from the clinic first, so she wouldn't have to open it alone."

Wren made a small noise in her throat.

"I read her the numbers, and I held her, and I told her she was enough."

Someone near the front was crying.

Someone else began to clap, and then the whole room joined.

I stood very still.

"My wife is here tonight," Owen said, over the applause. "I know it. She's been unwell, and she's had a difficult spring. But tonight is her night too."

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