You Are Not Rejecting Me novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Eleven Letters

Marigold knocked on the kitchen door at eleven that night, and she did not come in.

She stood on the step with her barn coat zipped to her chin.

"I came to say I'm sorry for the casserole mess," she said. "And for the photograph, which isn't my fault, but I'm sorry anyway."

"It's not your fault," I said.

"Is he up?"

Cadell was already behind me in the hall.

He had not slept since the barn, and it showed.

"Marigold."

"Cadell."

They stood and looked at each other across the threshold, two big, tired people.

I took the dish towel off my shoulder and gave Idris a look.

He understood it at once.

We went out through the pantry and left them the kitchen.

I stopped in the dark of the back hall anyway, where I could hear.

"I wrote you eleven letters," Marigold said.

"I know."

"You never answered one."

"I know that, too."

There was the sound of a drawer being unlocked, and a rustle of paper.

"I kept every one," Cadell said, hoarse. "I couldn't open them."

He rubbed his face.

"If I read what you wrote, I'd have had to go and get you. I'd just been made Alpha, and I thought I couldn't."

"You were twenty-two."

"I was a coward."

"You were twenty-two," Marigold said again, gentler.

A chair scraped.

"Read them now," she said. "I'll wait."

I put my hand over my mouth and went the other way, quietly, with my eyes stinging.

Idris was leaning in the doorway of the dark pantry.

He took one look at my face and pulled me in against him.

"They're all right," I whispered.

"They're not," he said. "But they will be."

"You think so?"

"I think my brother finally opened a drawer."

I laughed into his shirt, and then I did not laugh.

His hands had gone to my waist, and I was looking at his mouth.

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