My Stepfather Sold Me at the Card Table, and the Man Who Won Me Never Looked My Way novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Snowed In

Maeve's POV

The widow made up the bed in the spare room and left us the stove.

She said the road was closed till morning, and she said it to the wall, like a woman who had buried a husband and saw no sense in ceremony.

"One bed," she said. "I'm seventy-nine. I don't sleep in it."

She went down the hall and shut her door.

I sat on the edge of the narrow bed with the shoebox on my knees.

Inside, under the twine, lay a small black book with a cracked spine.

The dates ran down the left side in a round, confident hand I had seen on a hundred birthday cards.

First of March, the year my mother died.

Eleven bottles, a column of initials, a sum in the margin.

Four hundred and one.

I read the whole page by lamplight, and the next.

Then I put the book back in the box and closed the lid, because I had got to the edge of what I could carry for one night.

Cormick stood at the window with his back to me.

He had said nothing since the door closed.

He had been standing like that for a quarter of an hour with his hands loose at his sides.

The room had a bed, a chair, a woodstove glowing orange through its little window and a quilt in a pattern of faded stars.

I could hear the wind moving around the house.

"Come here," I said.

He turned.

His face was wrecked.

I thought of what he had said in the truck.

I'm asking for nothing.

He had meant it, and he stood in front of me as a man stands who has already been told no.

"Sit," I said, and patted the quilt.

He sat on the very edge of the mattress, as far from me as the bed allowed.

I put the box on the floor.

"You said you're asking for nothing," I said.

"Aye," Cormick said.

"I'm not good at taking people at their word. I count."

← Chapter 15 · All chapters · Chapter 17 →

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