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Chapter Twenty-one
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2025-05-19 06:54:35
Latest chapter
I Never Hated You Epilogue
Lucas stared at the little white house. The roof was in bad shape, so it would be the first priority. And the place definitely needed a coat of paint, and some weatherproofing before the winter hit. Then there was plenty to do on the inside—some rewiring, some plumbing, and lots of cosmeticstuff. It was a fixer-upper, for sure. “It doesn’t feel real,” he said almost to himself.Mark grunted as he lowered the tailgate of their rental trailer. “It’s real. Now come help me. This stuff isn’t going to move itself.”They were just maneuvering the couch down the trailer’s ramp when Elise’s pickup pulled into the driveway, its back piled high with the last of Mark’s belongings from the apartment. Alex swung out of the driver’s side and grabbed a box from the truck bed. “Moving sucks,” he said in greeting.Sebastian climbed out of the passenger side. He and Alex had only been together for a couple weeks, so he was kind of a saint for helping with the move. And for putting up with Alex’s bitch
I Never Hated You Chapter Ninety-two
It was the opposite of the way he was behaving now. “Something happened,” he said firmly.“It just caught up to me,” Lucas said. “All of it. I don’t want to have to fight for every damn thing. I want one thing in my life to be easy. Plain and simple. You and me—we’re not simple.”Mark had no idea how to respond. “I want to quit the church,” he said, almost to himself. “I decided. I haven’t done it yet, but—”“Don’t do it!” Lucas looked almost ill. “You’re made for that job. It’s your calling, or whatever. More than a job. It’s part of who you are and you were always happy doing it. You should keep doing it. It’s important.”Mark stared at Lucas. “Yeah, I was happy doing it. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll be happy doing it now. Things have changed. You know that.”“Changed because of me.”“Yes. But in a good way.” He’d said the same thing to Daniel a few hours earlier, but maybe he should have been making it more clear to Lucas all along. “I feel like I’ve woken up. Sleeping wasn’t ba
I Never Hated You Chapter Ninety-one
“No,” he said. “I won’t make that choice. I can love Lucas and love God. I know that to be true. And I believe that I can love Lucas and serve the church. If you don’t believe that I can, you’ll have to decide what to do about it. But I won’t give him up.”“And I think that’s a good place for us to leave things,” Daniel said smoothly. “You’ve offered Mr. Webber his previous position. We accept that but reject any special provisions that go along with the position, any rules that apply only to him. He’s done nothing wrong and does not deserve to be placed on any sort of probation.”“It’s not a special rule to say that priests work within certain boundaries and are held to a higher standard,” Berton retorted.“Well, that’s something we can discuss at a future meeting. In the meantime, should Mr. Webber return to work tomorrow?”Berton frowned at the lawyer. “No,” he finally said. “Not until this is resolved. If it can’t be done at this meeting, he can just sit on the sidelines until it
I Never Hated You Chapter Ninety
“We’re just going to listen,” Daniel Cohen said. The lawyer sounded as if he’d said the same thing to countless clients countless times. “We don’t decide anything right now, and we don’t give them any information. Okay? You can exchange greetings, talk about the weather a bit, but that’s it.”Mark nodded. He understood the strategy. The church had come to a preliminary conclusion about Mark’s situation, but nothing was formalized yet. Nothing was final. Mark needed to keep his mouth shut and let Daniel do his job.“We walk away, discuss their offer, and get back to them with a counteroffer if needed.”“It’s definitely going to be some sort of offer? You’re sure they aren’t going to just apologize for being paranoid and ask me to get back to work as soon as possible?”“That would be lovely. And it’s not completely impossible. But I don’t think it’s the most likely outcome, no.”Mark nodded slowly. This was all so far from what he wanted the church to be about. They should be helping pe
I Never Hated You Chapter Eighty-nine
“But you don’t think they will. ’Cause if they do, that’ll solve all your problems, right? Mark’s not going to wait around for another three years.”Lucas couldn’t fool himself about that. “So if I go back to jail, Mark and I will be over anyway. If you thought I was going, you wouldn’t have offered me all that money.”She frowned at him for a while before admitting, “It’s Plan B.”“I hope Plan C is you backing off and getting used to it, because A and B are getting you nowhere.” He wanted to be respectful of Jimmy Webber’s mother, and it wasn’t like he wanted to piss off Mark Webber’s mother either. But she wasn’t leaving him many options.And she wasn’t leaving him alone, either. She peered curiously at his face before slowly saying, “No. Plan C…there’s a reason it’s the last one on my list. It’s the plan that depends on you having some level of human decency, some tiny speck of compassion or affection for my son. You can understand why I didn’t think it would be successful. But at
I Never Hated You Chapter Eighty-eight
Lucas wished there was more he could do. He’d helped Mark sort through pictures of his father and listened to the stories behind the different photographs. He’d taken the afternoon of the funeral off work and waited anxiously in Mark’s apartment, ready to comfort him when he returned from the ceremony. He’d done everything he could think of, but it didn’t feel like enough.“He’s doing okay,” he told Elise when she asked, and he didn’t think it was a lie, exactly. Mark was okay. The days were passing and Mark was recovering. But he’d lost more than his father, and he was clearly drifting a little. Two family members dead, one refusing to speak to him. A career that was still in limbo. He didn’t seem to be talking to anyone but Lucas about any of it, and Lucas really wasn’t sure he was equipped to give the man any real help.He’d stopped working so many hours at the farm in order to spend more time with Mark and he was cleaning up for the day when he saw an unfamiliar car pull into the
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