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Chapter 136: Sunday Dinner
publish date:
2026-07-25 23:11:56
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THE PRICE OF LETTING GO Chapter 139: Three Weeks
“I need to ask you for something,” I said.We were sitting on my couch two days after the sentencing, the apartment quiet in a way it hadn’t been in months. No danger left to watch for. No phone to fear. Just the ordinary hum of a Wednesday evening and the two of us, finally, with nothing forcing us together except the wanting. His shoes were off, tucked neatly by the door the way they’d started to be lately, a small domestic detail that still caught me off guard every time I noticed it.Dominic set down his coffee. “Anything.”“Don’t say that until you hear it.”He studied my face, something moving behind his eyes. “Okay. What is it.”I took a breath. I’d been rehearsing this for two days and it still didn’t come out easy.“I want three weeks,” I said. “No calls. No texts. No showing up outside my building or my office. Nothing.”His whole body went still.“Three weeks,” he repeated slowly.“I need to know who I am when nothing is happening,” I said. “Every single time we’ve gotten
THE PRICE OF LETTING GO Chapter 138: The Statement
I sat at my kitchen table Sunday night with a blank page in front of me and could not write a single word.Dominic sat across from me, not pushing, just present, a mug of tea going cold between his hands.“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him,” I said. “I’ve imagined this moment for weeks and now that it’s actually here, I have nothing.”“You don’t owe him eloquence,” Dominic said. “You just owe yourself the truth.”“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve never had to explain to a room full of strangers why a man’s actions actually hurt you. You just have to sit there and let him be sentenced.”“I’m not sitting there easily either,” Dominic said quietly. “I keep thinking about what I’ll feel when they read the sentence out loud. I don’t know if it’ll feel like relief or like something else I don’t have a name for yet.”I looked at the blank page again.“Wren wants to speak too,” I said. “She called me an hour ago. Said she needs to say something, for her mother’s sake, for her own
THE PRICE OF LETTING GO Chapter 137: The Gala
I stood in front of my mirror in a dress I had bought that afternoon, my hands not quite steady on the zipper.“You look like you’re getting ready for a funeral, not a gala,” Camille said from my bed, watching me through the reflection, a glass of wine already in her hand though the night hadn’t started.“It feels like both,” I said. “A funeral for the version of me that got to stay private. A gala for whatever comes after.”“Dramatic.”“Accurate.”She got up and zipped the rest of the dress for me, her hands steady where mine weren’t, her fingers brushing the back of my neck once before she stepped back to check her work.“You know you don’t have to do this,” she said. “You could still say no. Let Dominic go alone.”“I know.”“But you’re not going to.”“No,” I said, looking at myself properly for the first time all evening. “I’m not.”Dominic picked me up at seven, and the second I saw him in the doorway, dark suit, no tie, the particular careful way he held himself when he was nervo
THE PRICE OF LETTING GO Chapter 136: Sunday Dinner
Dominic stood outside my mother’s door holding a bottle of wine like it might save him. He’d changed his shirt twice before we left my apartment, a fact he hadn’t mentioned but that I’d noticed anyway.“You don’t need that,” I said. “She’s not going to judge you on wine.”“She’s going to judge me on everything,” he said. “I want at least one thing in my favor when she starts.”I laughed, and some of the tightness in my own chest let go with it.“Ready,” I said. It wasn’t a question.“No,” he said. “But I’m going in anyway.”My mother opened the door before I could knock, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her eyes moving straight past me to him, sweeping him head to toe in the space of a single breath.“So,” she said. “You’re the one.”“Mrs. Whitmore.” His voice came out steady, though I felt his hand tighten slightly around mine. “Thank you for having me.”“Don’t thank me yet.” She stepped back to let us in, her gaze still fixed on him. “Thank me after dinner, maybe.”The house smelle
THE PRICE OF LETTING GO Chapter 135:The Morning After
I woke up on Fletcher’s couch with a blanket someone had draped over me sometime in the night.The house was quiet. Real quiet, not the held-breath kind we had all been living inside for weeks. Sunlight came through the tall windows and landed warm across the floor, and for a moment I just lay there, listening to nothing happen.Dominic was asleep in the armchair across the room, still in yesterday’s shirt, his neck bent at an angle that would hurt when he woke up. I watched him for a long moment. The lines around his eyes had softened in sleep, the constant vigilance finally let go.I got up carefully, not wanting to wake him, and found the kitchen.Fletcher was already there, coffee in hand, staring out the window at nothing in particular.“Couldn’t sleep either,” he said, not turning around.“I slept some.” I found a mug and poured myself coffee from the pot he’d made. “Just woke up and couldn’t fall back.”“That happens after something like last night.” He finally looked at me. “H
THE PRICE OF LETTING GO Chapter 134: The House Upstate Again
The gravel drive looked the same as it had the first time, dark and long, the house rising up at the end of it with a single light burning in the study window.“He’s already inside,” Dominic said, staring at that light through the windshield, his hand still gripping mine tight enough to hurt. “He knew we’d come here.”“How,” I asked. “How would he know?”“Because it’s the one place that means something,” Dominic said. “He’s been watching us long enough to know that.”Priya had called the police the moment we left the gallery, but we had a head start Reyes didn’t know about, and Dominic would not wait in the car for sirens that might arrive too late.“I’m going in,” he said, already reaching for the door handle.“We’re going in,” I said.He looked at me, and for once, he did not argue.The front door was unlocked, same as before. We stepped into the dark hallway, past the frozen grandfather clock, past the portraits that watched us with painted, indifferent eyes. Our footsteps sounded
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