If You Leave, I Leave novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Honeymoon That Wasn't

The Dunmere ferry was still tied up at the same crooked dock, with the same planks my father had paid a month's wages for.

My father stood on the bank with a lantern in his fist and looked at the man beside me.

"She's yours till morning," he said to Corwin. "Mind the boards."

"Yes, sir," Corwin said.

He sat down on the dock, took his boots off, and set them side by side before he stepped onto the deck.

My father looked at me.

I looked at the river.

"Go on, then," my father said gruffly, and went up the bank without turning round.

Corwin poled us out into the shallows, where the water ran slow and brown under a moon one night past full.

We anchored below the willows.

Nobody could see us from either shore.

For the first time in four years, there was nothing coming.

No thirty nights, no cells, no King, and no wolf waiting behind his eyes for the sun to go down.

"It's very quiet," Corwin said.

"It's a river."

"I don't know what to do with my hands."

"I have a few ideas," I said.

I spread the blanket on the planks and lit the lantern, and then I stood in front of him and held out both my hands.

"No gloves," I said.

"No gloves."

"No cuffs. No cot. No door frame."

"No clock," he said, and I kissed him.

It was slow, and it was the first time it had ever been slow.

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