All Chapters of Too Late To Love Me : Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

Leo's POVIt took me most of a day and three favors, but by the next evening I had what Ariana needed.His name was Walter Brandt. Fifty-eight years old, lived alone in a rented flat above a dry cleaner on the east side, worked nights as a security guard at a storage facility. He had a bad left knee from an old fall and a sister in another state he called every Sunday. He owed money to a man who played cards in the back of a bar, and he drank more than he should.What mattered was the rest of it. Brandt had worked for Vitz for two seasons, nearly twenty years back, and left after a falling-out over pay. Nobody I talked to could say exactly what was said, only that Vitz had called him ungrateful and Brandt had called Vitz something worse. After that, nothing. No holiday cards. No favors. The two men hadn't been in the same room since.I drove across the river, parked three streets from the house, and took the long way in. Ariana was in the hidden room, sitting at the steel table with h

Gerald's POV"I found an apartment."Ari said it so casually, over a mouthful of toast, that for a second I thought I had misheard her.Nobody spoke. Mabel had just set down a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched her hand pause on the handle before she moved away from the table."An apartment," Osborne repeated."A small one. Above a bakery, about ten minutes from the bar." Ari brushed a crumb off her sweater. "The landlord showed it to me yesterday. It's nothing fancy, but it's clean, and the rent is fair. I can move in by the end of the week.""The end of the week," I said."Friday, probably." She set down her toast and looked around the table. "I wanted to say thank you. All of you. You took in a stranger at three in the morning, you fed me, you gave me a room and a lock on the door. I don't think I'd have gotten through this without it. But I don't want to overstay.""You haven't overstayed," I said, a little too quickly."It's been almost a month, Gerald.""That's not long.""It's

Gerald's POVI got there just as Ari wrenched her wrist out of his grip."Let go," she said. Her voice was low and flat, and nothing in it was polite anymore. "Now. And back off."The man laughed. He actually laughed, and reached across the counter again. "Come on, sweetheart. Don't be dramatic."I stepped between them.I didn't plan it. My shoulder simply ended up in front of her, and my hand ended up on the bar between his fingers and her arm. He stopped, mid-reach, and looked at me like I was a coat rack that had spoken."She said no," I said."Who asked you?""She did. Twice. Three times, if you count the wrist.""Who are you, her boyfriend?""That doesn't matter.""It kind of does." He straightened and puffed himself up, a few inches taller than me, maybe thirty pounds heavier. "This is between me and the lady.""There's no between. She's working. You're a customer. You've finished your drink." I kept my voice even. "It's time to leave her alone.""Or what?"I didn't answer. I ju

Gerald's POVI read the name on the screen upside down, and it still took me a moment to believe it.Alex.Ari's face had gone pale. The softness from a minute ago was gone, wiped away so fast I almost wondered if I had imagined it. She snatched the phone off the counter and pressed it to her ear."Hello?"I couldn't hear the other voice. I only heard her."Who is this?" A pause. "Where? When?" Her free hand gripped the edge of the bar, and her knuckles went white. "Is he conscious? Is he... okay. Okay. Which hospital?"She hung up and stood there for a second, staring at nothing."Ari?""It's Alex." Her voice came out thin. "He's been in an accident. A nurse called from his phone. They found my number in his recent calls."I should have felt something simple. Relief that it wasn't serious, or sympathy, or even satisfaction. Instead I felt completely lost. This was the man who had put a handprint on her face. The man she had run from barefoot in the middle of the night. The man whose

Valarie's POVI stood beside Ari at the hospital window and watched Gerald's car sit under the streetlamp.She hadn't noticed me. She never did. Her palm was flat on the glass and her breathing had gone shallow. For someone who had just spent twenty minutes smiling and apologizing and looking ashamed, she was suddenly very still, like a woman waiting for a verdict.I had watched every minute of that lie.I had seen the way her voice shook in exactly the right places. I had heard her tell Gerald she didn't know how she felt about Alex. I had seen Gerald's shoulders loosen as he believed her. And I had stood in the corner thinking about a wall covered in photographs, a red circle around my father's name, and three words in her handwriting.Some of what she said had to be true. The best lies always carry a little truth. But I couldn't tell which parts, and that bothered me more than the lie itself.Gerald hadn't moved. The blue light of his phone lit his face from below.*What are you lo