He Let Our Baby Die Over a Hospital Bill novel · Chapter 19 of 32
Chapter 19: Stay
He didn't answer right away.
He took his hands out of his pockets and held them out, palms up, the way he had over the folding table.
I put mine in them.
"Are you sure?" he said.
"Ask me again in the truck."
He asked me again in the truck. I said yes.
He asked me again at the bottom of his shaking stairs. I said yes.
At the top, with his key in the door, he turned around.
"Prewitt."
"Coffey, if you ask me one more time on these stairs, I'm taking the bus home."
He laughed and opened the door.
He didn't turn on the big light.
He turned on the lamp by the couch, and the little one over the stove.
The basil on the windowsill smelled green in the warm room.
I stood in the middle of his floor with my bag still on my shoulder.
"Before anything," I said, "I want to tell you some things."
"Okay."
He didn't come closer. He leaned against the counter and waited.
"I had a C-section three months ago. You know that. You were there."
"I was there."
"The scar is low, and it's still pink. My stomach isn't what it was. There are stretch marks, all down here."
I touched my hip through my jeans.
"My doctor cleared me in June. I've been on the pill since. I want you to use something anyway. I'm not ready to be scared like that."
"I've got something," he said. "Bathroom cabinet. Army habit."
That made me laugh, which helped.
"The last man who touched me logged it," I said. "After. Every time. I used to lie there and listen to him type."
Abe's face didn't change, but his hand closed on the edge of the counter.
"I don't want you to be careful with me," I said. "But I want to be the one who starts it. I want the light on. I want you to see me. All of it."
"Okay."
"And if I say stop, you stop."
"I'll stop."
"I know you will. You did on the stairs."
He pushed off the counter.
He crossed the room slowly and stopped in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of He Let Our Baby Die Over a Hospital Bill are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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