Page 64 of At Last

“Yes. I hung up on him.”

“What? Why?” she asks, well more like screams as she laughs. Yes, laughs. As if anything I’ve said is funny.

“Because I have to break up with him.”

“Sweetie, I know he made a mistake with his mother-in-law, but you can’t really be still holding—”

“That’s not it.” Do I have the guts to repeat it out loud again? “On the phone, before I hung up, I blurted out…”

Her voice has calmed. “Blurted out?” She draws out the out to make it five syllables long.

“I blurted out that I love him.”

She giggles. “That’s what I thought you were going to say. What’d Duke say?”

“Nothing. He said nothing. Not even thank you. Just let the words hang between us through the humiliating silence. Then you called, and I hung up on him.”

“I can’t believe you hung up on Duke,” she says, getting her giggles under control.

“It was for the best.”

“Well girl, I’m married to a badass biker who I’m going to call right now because I don’t want to deal with the fallout from him finding out about that little girl later. But I can tell you, they don’t take kindly to being hung up on.”

“Yeah…” That’s all I have in me to reply.

Laynie Briggs is missing.

Laynie Briggs.Is missing.

So what happens when he finds out he took the wrong girl?

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