My Fiancé and Brothers Left Me at the Altar for My Adopted Sister novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Alibi

Dustin never answered my message.

By evening I had stopped checking.

Rafe sat at my kitchen table in one of Dad's old flannel shirts, because his suit was torn and I had nothing else that would fit across his shoulders.

He ate the pasta I made.

"You don't have to feed me," he said.

"I'm aware."

"It's good."

"It's boxed sauce."

"It's still good."

I almost laughed, and it surprised me.

It was the first time in two days.

I gave him the blanket and the pillow from the bed, and he took them without argument and made up the couch in the dark.

I lay in my room with the door open an inch and listened to him breathe.

At eleven he turned over.

At eleven thirty he got up for water.

I heard the tap, and then nothing.

I got up too.

He was standing at the window in the dark kitchen with a glass in his hand, looking down at the street.

The streetlight made a yellow patch on the floor between us.

"Can't sleep?" I said.

"I don't, much."

"Why?"

"Habit." He didn't turn around. "I'm waiting for her to call and say she's sorry."

"Does she ever?"

"Once."

He drank some water.

"She was nine," he said. "She'd broken my mother's good plate."

I came closer, until I was close enough to see the long scrape along his jaw.

"Does it hurt?"

"No."

"Liar."

He turned his head.

We were standing very near each other, with only the glass between us, and he didn't step back.

My bare feet were cold on the tile.

His shirt, my father's shirt, smelled like my laundry soap and, under it, like a man who works with his hands.

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