Finally Moving On After A Decade novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Hands in Pockets

On Monday I drove to the Harlan Hotel with my right hand already closed.

I had not slept more than two hours since the gala.

Brooks Ferrin kept a suite on the ninth floor.

I had the number from the schedule Lydia taped to our refrigerator.

I did not need the number.

He was sitting in the lobby when I walked in, in an armchair by the front window with a coffee on the table in front of him.

He had both hands in his jacket pockets.

"I figured Monday," he said.

I crossed the lobby faster than I meant to.

I took two fistfuls of his lapels and hauled him up out of the chair.

A bellman by the door took one step toward us and stopped.

Brooks let me.

He stood up with his hands still in his pockets and looked me in the eye from three inches higher than I was.

"Go ahead," he said. "It won't change the number."

"What number?"

"Hit me if it helps."

I wanted to.

My knuckles ached with it.

I pushed him back against a marble pillar instead, hard enough that the coffee cup rang on its saucer.

He still didn't take his hands out.

"You told her you'd cancel the money," I said. "In the hallway, before you went up there. You told her Fairhaven would lose every bed unless she kissed you."

Brooks's face changed.

It wasn't fear.

It looked more like a man hearing a song he had heard too many times.

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