He Said Apologize, I Said the Wedding Is Off novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Four Cars in the Drive

Cal stands on the cedar chest in the drive while Marcy cries into Rupert's phone; Rupert takes her side and leaves with a friend driving him, and the phone he forgets lights up with a message from M: Don't forget what you owe me.

I listened to the wind on Cal's end for what felt like a long time.

Rupert stood over the coffee table with his hands in his pockets, watching my phone.

Then I heard boots on gravel, and a truck engine idling, and Cal's voice, level and unhurried.

"Evening, fellas. That chest stays where it is."

"Who are you?" a man asked.

"The neighbor. Put it down on the porch, please. It's got a latch that sticks, and you'll drop it."

"Marcy said it's hers to take. Rupert gave her the keys."

"Rupert doesn't own it, and neither does Marcy," Cal said.

"The woman who owns it is on the phone and can hear you."

I leaned toward the phone.

"This is Greta Holm," I said. "The house is mine. Please put my grandmother's chest down."

There was a long scrape of wood on wood.

"Fine," the man said. "Jesus. We were just moving it so it wouldn't get wet."

"It's snowing inside the truck bed?" Cal said.

Nobody answered that.

Then a woman's voice came from somewhere farther off, thin and wavering.

"Please, can everyone just stop? I only wanted one nice night for my son."

It was Marcy.

She was crying again, and she did it very well.

Rupert's own phone began to buzz on the table.

He snatched it up. "Marcy? Are you okay?"

I could hear her from where I sat, a small, broken voice coming through his speaker.

"There's a man in the yard shouting at us. Greta sent him. Rupert, he's scaring my boy."

"Nobody is shouting," I said.

Rupert turned on me with his hand over the phone.

"You sent a stranger out to threaten a widow and a child in the middle of the night?"

"He's not a stranger. He's the neighbor."

"He's a man with a gun in a yard."

"Cal doesn't have a gun," I said, though I wasn't sure.

On my phone, Cal said evenly, "I have a flashlight and a thermos."

Rupert ignored it.

"I'm going up there," he said.

"You can't. The highway's closed."

"Then I'll find a way."

He dropped his phone on the charger by the couch and grabbed his coat from the hook.

I was too tired to be careful.

"You can't drive at night, Rupert. You haven't driven after dark in three years."

For a moment he held very still with one arm in his sleeve.

"I'll get someone to drive me," he said.

"It's my house."

"That's the whole trouble with you," he said. "Everything is about whose it is."

He called one of the friends who had stood in our kitchen telling me to be reasonable.

A man's voice answered on the second ring, and Rupert said, "Come get me. Marcy needs us."

I realized that no one had said my name in that sentence.

Cal's voice came back from my phone.

"Greta? They're still in the drive. Your chest's on the porch, and I'm standing on it."

"You're what?"

"Sitting, mostly. It's a good chest."

I almost laughed, and the laugh caught in my throat.

"Cal, thank you. I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything yet," he said. "There's a lot I haven't told you."

"Like what?"

"The front windows are open, and somebody's been through the back bedrooms. I'd rather you didn't hear it over a phone in front of him."

I looked at Rupert.

He was lacing his boots with his jaw set, and he didn't look at me.

"I'll call you when it's light," Cal said. "Get some sleep."

I hung up.

A horn sounded in the street below.

Rupert reached for his keys in the bowl by the door, then left them where they were.

"Don't wait up," he said.

"I wasn't going to."

"Greta." He stopped with his hand on the knob and spoke without turning. "She's been through a lot. You don't know what she's been through."

"Then tell me."

His shoulders moved.

For a moment I thought he might.

"It's not mine to tell," he said, and the door closed behind him.

The apartment was very quiet after that.

I sat on the arm of the couch and looked at my ring finger, which was bare.

I should have been crying, and I wasn't.

I was thinking about the lights on in every window of my grandmother's house.

By the couch, Rupert's phone lit up on its charger.

He had rushed out without it.

I didn't pick it up.

I didn't have to.

The preview sat on the lock screen in white letters, from a contact saved only as M.

"Don't forget what you owe me."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

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