He Locked Me Out Now He’s Begging Me Back Chapter 42
“Not far from work.”
I nodded.
“Tessa moved, too. She found a new job, and Noah transferred to another school district. She hasn’t been talking to me much lately. I think she still blames me for selling the house.”
“Mm.”
“She said if you hadn’t insisted—”
Daniel stopped himself, as if finally realizing he shouldn’t finish that sentence.
After a moment, he gave a short, bitter laugh.
“When I talk to you about my family now, it’s like I’m reporting the news.”
“You don’t need to tell me anymore.”
The faint smile on his face slowly disappeared.
“Claire, we did live together for a long time.”
“And I completed every necessary legal process because of that.”
The rain came down harder.
Daniel reached into his pocket and took out a key.
It was the old key to the house. The edges had been worn smooth, though the key ring had been replaced.
“After the lock was changed, it stopped working,” he said. “I kept it. I thought maybe you’d want it as a keepsake.”
I didn’t reach for it.
He held it out a little farther.
“That house was always yours.”
I looked at the key.
I thought of the fingerprint scanner flashing red. Of the countdown on my phone that read *Guest—expires in 21 days*.
I thought of Tessa’s clothes in the master bedroom, the boxes stacked to the ceiling in the ADU.
I thought of the school residency affidavit, the HELOC proposal, and the line on the shared screen—
*She’d never be able to throw out a child.*
He had taken away my access with his own hands.
And now that it was all over, he wanted to wrap it up as a belated act of generosity by handing me a dead key.
“It used to be,” I said. “Now the house belongs to someone else.”
His hand stayed suspended in the rain.
Water landed on the key and slid through his fingers.
Slowly, he drew it back and said in a low voice,
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Then I turned and walked into the rain.
Without looking back.