“You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” he said quietly, “I do.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been watching her for four years, and I know you better than you know yourself. You won’t let anything bad happen to her… except you.”
I exhaled shakily.
“What if she doesn’t open the invitation, Henry? What if she throws it away without ever opening it? I don’t want to marry anyone but her, even temporarily, but I refuse to lose my fucking inheritance to my conniving bitch of a stepmother.”
“Then,” Henry said, with the patience of a man who’d dragged me through hell and back, “you put the contract in her mailbox tonight, and she opens that.”
“And if she doesn’t?” I asked again, voice cracking like a fault line.
“If she doesn’t,” Henry said, slower and steadier, “you regroup. You adapt. You adjust your strategy.”
“And if nothing works?” I whispered.
Henry didn’t hesitate.
“Then you pivot and fight harder.”
I closed my eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled.
“Right,” I murmured. “I know.”
Chrissy stepped out of the hospice doors, head down, moving fast… too fast and too damn distracted. I stared at her through the rain-blurred windshield as she hustled to her car, hugging her coat around herself like armor she didn’t even realize was too thin.
“Jesus,” I said, eyes locked on her. “She’s literally trying to get herself killed, I swear.”
“What now?” Henry sighed.
“She left her car unlocked again,” I snarled. “Walked right up to it without checking under, without checking in, withoutchecking behind her. She didn’t even look around, just climbed in her car like a goddamn gazelle daring a lion to eat it.”
Henry exhaled a long, unimpressed breath.
“Stop bitching and make sure she gets home safe.”
“She’s careless,” I snapped.
“She’s exhausted,” Henry countered. “And you’re in love. Get your shit together and handle it.”
“I am handling it.”
“No, you’re fussing about it,” he deadpanned. “Get moving, son.”
“Henry—”
Click.
He hung up on me.
I stared at my phone like it had personally betrayed me.
“Unbelievable.”
I rolled my eyes and tossed the phone onto the truck’s bench seat with a disgusted grunt.
