Chapter 6 - What Was Left on the Table
We walked out together. Outside, I let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding for weeks.
Bradley reached for my hand. "Feel better?"
"A little."
"You know she's going to hate me for months over this."
"Probably."
"Maybe years."
"Also possible."
I glanced back through the restaurant window. Vivian was still sitting at that table with the check in front of her. She had wanted to prove that a woman like me would choose money the instant somebody put a real number on the table.
Instead, she'd put a price on her own relationship with her son.
We got married six months later. Vivian attended. She never apologized, and I never expected her to. But the little comments stopped completely. She never once asked whether I planned to quit working. She never mentioned my clothes, my upbringing, or whether I knew how to "take care of a husband properly."
And she never offered me money again.
I kept my career. I kept my student loans too, right up until I paid them off myself, dollar by dollar. More importantly, I kept Bradley.
Vivian had believed ninety thousand dollars would show him exactly what kind of woman I really was.
May you like
In the end, it did.
Just not remotely the way she'd planned.
