He Played Husband for Her Dare, So I Left Carrying His Baby novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Rain on the Creek

The storm came up the creek at nine that night, and the power went out at ten past.

I was sitting on the bed with a quilt around my shoulders when someone knocked on the stuck door.

"It's me," Hank said. "Lift it from your side."

I lifted it.

He stood on the landing, soaked to the skin, with a lantern in one hand and a thermos in the other.

"I've tied down the boats," he said. "The generator's for the office. I figured you'd want light."

"Come in before you drown."

He ducked under the frame.

Rain ran off his hair and down the line of his jaw.

He set the lantern on the table and the room went gold.

"It's tea," he said, and held up the thermos. "Ginger. Wren says you're off coffee."

"Wren says a lot."

"She says it in capital letters."

I took the cup he poured and held it in both hands.

Thunder went over the roof, and the little window shook.

He did not sit.

He stood by the table with his wet sleeves, and the lantern lit the chip in his tooth.

"You can sit," I said. "You're dripping on the floor."

He sat on the chair by the window, with the creek black behind him.

For a minute we only listened to the rain.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Anything."

"Be careful. I mean it."

"I'm listening."

I looked at my tea.

"You sat at our table for five years, Hank. Every Sunday, every Fourth of July, every anniversary dinner. You ate my pot roast."

"It was good pot roast."

"You watched Delia switch the place cards. You watched him wear her name on his shirt. You watched me ask him to stop, and he kissed my forehead and told me not to be serious."

"I did."

"And in that room, with the whole group watching, you said one sentence."

"Yes."

"One. Then you sat down."

He did not defend himself.

"I know," he said. "I've thought about that sentence every hour since. It should have been the fifth thing I said, or the tenth. I said it too late and too quietly."

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