They Borrowed My Surgery Fund To Leave Me Behind novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Nolan at the Door

Nolan Fenner knocked at nine, and he did it the way he had since we were eight, three taps and a pause.

I opened the door.

He stood in the hallway with a laptop bag over his shoulder and his glasses crooked, and he looked like he had not eaten since Lisbon.

"You can hit me," he said.

"I'm not going to hit you."

"I'd feel better."

"Come in," I said. "Wipe your feet."

He wiped his feet.

I sat him on my one good chair, with the cake from Caleb's mother on the table between us.

He looked at it and his eyes filled.

"She still makes the lemon one," he said.

"She made it for me because she thinks I'm dead."

Nolan put his face in his hands.

I waited.

I had a list in my notes app and a recording running in my coat pocket, and I felt almost nothing, which frightened me more than shouting would have.

"Say it," I said.

"I took your money."

"I know you did. Say the rest."

He wiped his face with the heel of his hand.

"Tripp made the memorial slide in March," he said. "The week your test results came back. You told him your valve numbers were worse. He sat in the apartment that night and typed the whole thing out."

"Typed what?"

"Your death." His voice cracked. "The date, what you were like, what you said at the end. He practiced it in the mirror."

I did not move.

"I thought it was a joke," Nolan said. "He called it his emergency pitch. He said investors give money to dead girls faster than to healthy founders."

"You thought it was a joke."

"For about a week."

He opened his laptop and turned the screen toward me.

On it was a document titled *If M Doesn't Make It, Talking Points*.

← Chapter 4 · All chapters · Chapter 6 →

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