He Priced Me at a Penny, So I Married Another novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Sunday

Dean left his badge and his keys on the white tablecloth.

Two men from the hotel staff walked him out of the ballroom, one on each side.

Nobody at the tables looked away.

Shelby went out the other door with her red dress held up in one fist and her phone in the other.

She stopped beside our table first.

"You think this is over?" she said to me.

Her mascara had run down to her jaw.

"I have every message he ever sent. I have the whole chat."

"Then send it to the police," Giles said. "Use my address if you need one."

She stared at him, and then she was gone.

Carol took my hand.

"Go on," she said. "The lobby. I want you to see the end of it."

The lobby of the Harbor Club had gold mirrors, a doorman and about forty guests waiting for their coats.

Dean stood in the middle of it in his rented tuxedo, with nobody next to him.

When he saw me come down the stairs on Giles's arm, he dropped to his knees on the marble.

"Tillie."

"Get up, Dean."

"I've always loved you."

Guests stopped talking.

Someone lifted a phone.

"You have the wrong idea about me," Dean said. "I know what I did. I was scared. You were so good, and I was never good enough, and it came out wrong."

"You wrote the card yourself."

"Shelby wrote it."

"You held the tape."

"I'm begging you. Please. Take me back."

I looked down at the top of his head.

He had a cowlick in his sandy hair that I used to smooth with my thumb in the mornings.

I waited to feel something for it.

"No," I said.

"Tillie."

"No."

"You'd throw away five years over one little thing?"

"It wasn't one thing. It was five years of them, and it was the first time I saw it."

I stepped around him.

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