The Boss Said My Father Drowned His Brother, So He Took Me to Stand in the Water novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Morning on the Lake

I woke in my mother's bed with the sun on my face and a man's arm across my ribs.

The rain had gone in the night.

Light came through the thin curtains in long gold bars and lay across the quilt and the floor and the back of his hand.

I lay still and listened to him breathe.

It was the first morning of the open lake.

I could smell it through the window, cold water and wet stone with something green underneath, and I could hear gulls on the roofs of Lakeside.

I turned over.

He was awake.

He lay on his side with his head on my grandmother's star quilt, looking at me, and he had been looking for some time.

"Good morning," Stellan said.

"You didn't move," I said.

"You told me not to reach."

"I was asleep."

"I didn't know if that still counted," he said.

I laughed.

It came out of me before I could stop it, a sleepy, helpless sound, and he smiled.

I had seen him smile perhaps three times.

It changed the whole of his face.

"Reach," I said.

"Yes?"

"Reach. It's morning."

He put his hand on my cheek.

It was warm and rough, and the scarred thumb moved across the bone, and I closed my eyes.

I felt him come closer.

His mouth touched my forehead, and my eyelids, and the corner of my mouth.

He kissed me with a slowness that undid something low in my belly.

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