I Was the Genius Couple's Forgotten Bride novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Bonding Endpoint

I went to work on Friday because I did not know what else to do with my hands.

The annex was quiet at eight-thirty, with the radiator knocking and Keith's door shut.

I stood at my desk with my coat still on.

Then I opened his door, walked in, and shut it behind me.

He looked up from his screen. "Nessa, it's work hours."

"I know."

"You said not here."

"I said a lot of things."

I crossed the office, took his tie in my fist, and kissed him against the supply closet door.

He made a rough sound and pulled me in with both hands.

My back hit the shelves, and a box of toner fell off the top.

Neither of us moved to pick it up.

"That's rule three," he said against my mouth.

"I'm aware."

"I want it noted that I did not once say yes."

"Noted," I said, and bit his lip, and left him there with his tie crooked.

That night I climbed the three flights to his flat.

I let myself in with the key he had given me on Tuesday without a speech.

He had made soup again.

It was better.

We did not eat it.

I sat on his couch with my knees pulled up.

I told him what was in the folder, and what my mother had kept on her top shelf for twenty-one years.

He listened with his elbows on his knees and did not interrupt.

When I finished, I said, "Did you know?"

"No."

"Keith."

"I did not know about the study," he said. "I swear it on whatever you like."

"But?"

"But I knew something was wrong with them. My second week, I saw Lydia ask you about your weekend, and you answered, and she wrote it down before you finished the sentence."

"I thought it was a habit."

"It looked like a habit. It looked like nothing, and I let it look like nothing."

"I should have said it then. I said nothing again."

I looked at my hands.

"Everything you did for me," I said. "The coffee. The job. The door you shut on them. I thought it was pity."

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