I Signed Away Eight Million to Leave Him novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Terrace Again

The Fitzroy estate was dark when we drove through the gate at ten.

No staff. No cars on the lawn. No lights in the windows.

It looked smaller empty. Most houses do.

Corbin unlocked the front door with the iron key and let me go in first.

The front hall smelled of dust and old gardenias.

The chandelier I'd rehung was wrapped in a white sheet.

I walked through the dark rooms touching things.

The linen on the breakfast room chairs. I'd picked it. The long table where I'd signed my name twice.

"Do you want to go upstairs?" Corbin asked.

"No."

"The Blue Room?"

"Especially not the Blue Room."

He nodded.

He opened the tall terrace doors, and the summer night came in.

It was the end of June and warm, the air thick with cut grass and the sound of crickets.

The stone terrace ran the length of the house. The big boxwood pots were still there, without the white lights.

I went to the balustrade and put my hands on the stone.

It was warm from the day.

The last time I'd stood here, it had been snowing on my shoulders.

Corbin came out behind me.

He was carrying something over his arm, folded.

A long black wool coat.

"You kept it," I said.

"I never wore it again. I couldn't." He shook it out. "It's eighty degrees. This is ridiculous."

"Do it anyway."

He put it around my shoulders.

The same weight. The same smell of cedar closet and something that was just him.

He stood close behind me, the way he had in the fifth photo.

He didn't bend down to my ear.

He turned me around to face him instead.

"I want to tell you what I didn't say," he said.

"You said I deserved someone who stays."

"That's what I said. That's not what I meant." He looked down at the stone. "I came out here for my one cigarette. And you were standing by that pot, shaking, trying not to make a sound."

"I remember."

"I'd sat across from you at dinner for three Christmases. You fixed the drawing room curtains during the soup because they bothered you. You were the only one who laughed at the old man's jokes. I liked you more every year, and I never said a word, because you were his."

He took a breath.

"I put the coat on you and I wanted to say, come inside with me. Sit by the piano. Let him come down and find you happy. And I didn't. I said one line and walked away, like a coward, and I played Christmas carols for an hour so I wouldn't come back out."

"You didn't owe me anything. I was engaged."

"I know. That's why I walked away." He looked up. "It's the last time I walk away from you. Ever."

I couldn't speak.

So I took his face in my hands, the way I had in the car in the rain.

"Turn the lights on," I said.

"What?"

"The terrace lights. All of them."

He looked at me. Then he went to the wall by the doors and flipped every switch.

The terrace lit up gold.

The lamps along the balustrade. The lanterns in the boxwood pots. The big lights over the doors.

Anyone on the road could see us. Anyone in any window.

"There," I said. "Now nobody has to crop anything."

And I kissed him in the middle of all that light.

He made a sound against my mouth that I felt all the way down.

His hands went inside the coat and found my waist through my thin linen dress.

I pulled him closer by his shirt.

"Here?" he said against my lips.

"Here. Right where she took them. With the lights on."

"Neve..."

"I'm choosing you, Corbin. Out loud. In the exact spot." I pulled back an inch. "Unless you'd like me to file a request with the board."

He laughed, low and helpless.

Then he spread the coat on the warm stone of the terrace and pulled me down onto it.

The coat was soft under my back, the stone beneath it warm through the wool.

← Chapter 19 · All chapters · Chapter 21 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend