He Married His Hometown Neighbor, Then Begged for a Second Chance novel · Chapter 29 of 40
Chapter 29: The Sentence
The roof of Harbor Row had a tar floor, a row of washing lines and a water tank on legs.
Evan had found it his first week, when he could not sleep.
Tonight he had come up with the suspension notice open on his phone.
Resolve Plus was dark, the Summit was thirteen days off, and he had told no one but the engineers.
He texted Ethan at nine.
*Roof. Come up. Alone.*
He did not write please, and he did not say why.
At ten past, the door at the top of the stairs opened.
Ethan stepped out into the wind, in a dark coat, with his hands empty.
He stopped just inside the door, and did not come closer until Evan nodded.
"You've been eating," Evan said.
"Gran put me on pears."
"She does that."
"I'm allowed one cup of tea a day. I used it on you."
"I noticed."
Below them the city lay in bands of orange and black, and the tower stood at the end of it.
The wind lifted Ethan's hair and the sheets on the lines.
Evan had practised what he would say.
He had run it in the shower, and on the stairs, and in the bakery's back room while the engineers slept.
Now it was not in his head at all.
He said the plain thing.
"You looked at the table."
Ethan did not move.
"Thursday. Nine o'clock. Maya put up the logs, and seven people raised their hands, and you looked at the table."
"Yes."
"I was standing six feet from you. I'd been in your bed the night before. I'd put your cold coffee in the sink at four in the morning, because you fell asleep over a report.
"And you studied the grain of the wood."
"I did."
"I kept thinking you'd look up. Every time somebody spoke, I thought, now. And it was never now." His voice cracked. "I took the badge off myself, and handed it to the guard, so nobody would see me shaking. I got into the lift with her.
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