Page 140 of Say My Name

“Thanks for letting me know,” I say into my phone, with as much joy as I can muster. “I’ll talk to you later, Finn.”

Finn says goodbye and hangs up.

They arrested Brandon and Sugar. The details are still coming together, but it’s finally over. Crazy how everything turned out. I should be thrilled, but I’m not.

Mainly because I’m sitting here pregnant with no clue how to tell the baby’s father. It’s pretty clear Devereaux wants nothing to do with me.

I mean, I’m a detective.

It could never work out.

Right?

I move through my house like a stranger. It no longer feels like home after living with Devereaux. The dry erase board is still in my living room, full of the pictures from the case.

I need to clean up this mess. Get back to my real life.

My phone rings as I walk over to the board.

“Are you doing ok?” my sister’s voice says.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Even through the phone, I can tell she doesn’t believe me. “Chloe, have you spoken to him?”

I hang my head. “There’s no point. I don’t need him to tell me it was all an illusion. I mean, that’s not my life.”

“Why not?”

“Because the man’s got more money than God. He’d never want me.”

“He did want you,” Ashley reminds me.

“No, he only wanted the version of me that I showed him. He only ever truly wanted Swan.”

Ashley’s quiet for a moment, and I have to check the phone to make sure I haven’t dropped the call.

“It’s over,” I say when I can’t handle the silence.

“What are you going to do about the baby?” she asks.

I suck in a breath and let it out slowly. “Have it, I guess.”

“Do you want me to come over and keep you company?”

I glance around my living room that’s cluttered with my notes from all the case files. “No, I’ll be fine. I’m going to clean up and watch a movie.”

“I saw on the news that they caught the killer.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t sound so down about it. You should be proud of yourself. You did it. You solved your first case.”

I stare at the pictures hanging on the dry erase board, and there’s something still not sitting right in my chest. “Yeah, I just can’t understand why Brandon would kill Luna.”

“Maybe she figured it out.”

“There’s just something that doesn’t feel right with me. Like why kill her? She wasn’t even a Greedy Girl, ya know?”

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