He Rejected Me Out Loud and Kept Other Women, So I Never Answered novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: No

I did not let him in.

I told him to sit on the top step, and he sat with his hat on his knee and his back against the rail.

I sat on the cot inside, with the door open between us and the lamp throwing both our shadows down the stairs.

Somewhere below, the fish house ticked and settled in the cold.

"Say it," I said. "Whatever you came to say."

He was quiet for a minute.

"I'll say it plain," he said, "and you can stop me anywhere."

I folded my arms. "Go on."

"I rejected you in front of two hundred wolves."

"You told me why, on the ferry," I said.

"I thought it would keep you out of my cousin's hands."

"I told you the reason," he said. "I didn't tell you what I did."

He turned the hat once on his knee.

"I stood in that loft and said I'd never have you. I said it to the wall, because I couldn't say it to your face and mean it."

His voice was low and level.

"I let a woman laugh at you, and I told myself it would be over in a minute."

"Then you took her home," I said.

"Then I took her home, and five more after her."

"Every one of them was a way of telling the island you were nothing to me," he said.

"I let your father price you out loud."

"And you bought the paper that made it count," I said.

"You put me in a net loft in October with no stove."

"And I put money in your pay behind your back," he said. "I couldn't stand to watch you cold, and I wouldn't say so."

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