My Almost Fiancé Is Still Married? novel

---- life. And now, you want to shatter what little dignity she has left?" Gerald stumbled backward, but he still stubbornly held out his hand. "Give me another chance. I don't want anything else, just you-" "You've long lost everything else," I said calmly, cutting him off. "Gerald , your remorse won't bring my dead mother back." Shem pointed to the brooch pinned on my shirt, the silver feather glistening coldly in the rain. "Do you recognize this, Mr. Chulp?" Gerald's pupils constricted.

That was the design sketch he had once torn apart. "You may have torn up the paper, but she grew new wings." "Enough!" With the last shred of his dignity crushed, Gerald suddenly let out a crazed laugh. Pointing at Shem, he yelled, "Do you think you've won? Deep down, she's still the Harriet who made sandwiches for me! You're just picking up what I threw away-"" Ahard slap landed on his face, turning it sideways. 1 shook my numb hand as emotions finally began to stir in my eyes.

"That was for you spitting on my mother's dying wish." ---- Another slap landed, this time with the back of my hand. "That was for you trampling on six years of my love." Just as I was about to hit him again, Shem caught my trembling wrist. "Don't dirty your hands," he said to me before turning to the security guards. "Toss him out." Two guards behind us walked over, restrained Gerald, and then threw him out. Shem wrapped an arm around my shoulders, his touch warm and steady.

"You're finished, Gerald," I said, giving the figure hunched there in the rain one last glance. Three months later, under the glare of spotlights, the final chapter of the Caged Bird series stunned the audience. Its shattered wings had transformed into a gilded cape. At curtain call, thousands of white doves soared skyward behind me. Gerald watched all this unfold on a mildew -stained TV ina cheap rental, with empty bottles piled around his feet.

When the news cut to the scene of Shem sliding an engagement ring onto my finger, he smashed the bottle in his hand, and the broken glass ---- cut deep into his palm. "Congratulations ..." He raised a half-empty bottle of cheap liquor into the air as blood and liquor dripped onto Sheryl's death certificate. We all had it coming."