Five Years of Marriage to Mr. Bradford novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Terms

Fiona would not let him in until he took off his shoes.

"I don't care whose husband you are," she said. "You'll not drip on my floor in your good ones."

He stood in my teacher's kitchen in his socks, in a puddle of his own making, with water running off his cuffs.

Fiona put a towel on the table and a kettle on the stove, and then she sat down across from me with a notebook and a pencil and her glasses on.

"What's that for?" Leonard said.

"I'm the witness."

"Leah," he said. "I'd like to speak to you alone."

"No," I said.

It came out steadier than I felt.

"You have five minutes. Fiona stays. I'm warning you now that I may not like what you say."

He looked at the towel and did not pick it up.

"I came to tell you why I can't sign," he said. "And it's not a short thing. It's not a thing I can say in a kitchen at midnight with you in your nightclothes and your teacher with a pencil. It has to be said properly, all of it, and you need to be ready to hear it."

"Then why did you come tonight?"

"Because you were on the internet, and I couldn't sit in Philadelphia another hour."

"I'm not ready," I said. "I don't think I will be for a while."

"I know."

"So you'll wait."

"Yes."

He said it before I had finished the word.

Too fast.

I noticed it, and I put it away to look at later.

"I'm going to give you terms," I said.

Fiona's pencil moved.

"Thirty days. You stay in Galway if you want to. I can't stop you from walking down the street."

"I'll take a flat."

"We see each other once a week. In public. A café, a pub, the sea wall, anywhere with other people in it."

← Chapter 8 · All chapters · Chapter 10 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend