Don, Your Regret Can't Keep Me novel · Chapter 29 of 32
Chapter 29: The Apartment
He came up the stairs behind me without a word.
Three flights.
On the second landing he stopped, and I heard why.
He was looking at the storage room door, at my cot through the crack, the one I'd slept on since November.
"Ten months," he said.
"Nine and a half."
At the top I unlocked my own front door.
I'd spent July on my knees again.
I'd sanded Gabriella's scuffs out of the walnut and put new cushions on the couch and turned the burned arm to the wall.
The yellow curtains were drawn, and the Feast lights came through them gold.
The new bed stood in the bedroom where the old one had been.
I'd quilted the bedspread for it at night, cream with yellow thread, after he went home every evening.
Mauro stopped in the bedroom doorway.
He looked at the bed, and at the cedar closet with its slatted doors open, and at his own watch still lying in the first felt slot.
"You left it there," he said.
"You left it there."
He didn't come closer.
He stood in the doorway with his hands at his sides, in his navy suit with no tie.
"Giada," he said. "I'm going to ask you this one, too."
"I asked you up."
"I know." His voice was rough. "I want to hear it anyway. Six years I decided what you wanted. I'm not deciding this."
I crossed the room to him.
I took his hand, the one with the silver ring, and put it flat over my heart, over the green dress.
"Yes," I said. "Tonight. Here. In the bed I built for us, with you in it."
He closed his eyes for a second.
"Say it again."
"Yes, Mauro."
He pulled the door shut behind him with his foot.
His eyes never left mine.
I reached for his jacket, pushed it off his shoulders, and let it drop to the floor.
He didn't move to pick it up.
A Don's suit on my clean floor, and he left it there, because I was the one undressing him.
I unbuttoned his shirt with slow fingers.
Each button, my knuckles against his chest.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of Don, Your Regret Can't Keep Me are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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