He Rejected Me Out Loud and Kept Other Women, So I Never Answered novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: The Oilskin
Rhiannon's POV
I climbed the back stairs of the Gaff slowly with one hand on the wall.
The door at the top stood open an inch.
He was sitting on the iron bed in his shirtsleeves with his elbows on his knees and his head down.
The room smelled of salt and cold dust.
He did not look up.
"You said one night," he said to the floor. "I know. I've no right."
"No," I said. "You haven't."
His head came up.
In the lamplight his eyes were pale and wrecked.
He did not know me.
I saw it in his face, the plain hope of a man looking at a stranger.
He had put a different woman in his bed every few nights for a week, and none of them had been her.
He thought I was the woman from the Gaff.
He did not know she and I were the same, or that I had stood in front of him at the Settling and signed a ledger he never read.
I stood in the doorway with my braid pinned up and the sea-salt tincture bright on my skin.
I had the whole island's secret in my mouth, and I swallowed it.
"Lock the door," I said.
He stood so fast the bed rang.
He crossed the room in two steps and turned the key.
"I thought you wouldn't come back," he said.
"I don't want you to think," I said.
"All right," he said.
"Take your shirt off," I said.
He did.
He dropped it on the floor without looking at it, and I looked at him.
He was breathing hard, with the old scar across his ribs, waiting for me to tell him what to do.
I felt the power of it go to my head like the bourbon.
"Not here," I said. "Somewhere you know."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of He Rejected Me Out Loud and Kept Other Women, So I Never Answered are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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