Found A Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Lower Wacker

At five-thirty on Tuesday morning, Quinton knocked on the bathroom door of the penthouse.

"You're going to be late," he said.

"For what? I don't go back to work till Wednesday."

"You're going to be late for your rounds, Verrill."

I opened the door with my toothbrush in my mouth.

He was standing in the hall in his old navy watch cap and the torn brown coat.

He was holding a paper bag and a cardboard tray with two coffees in it.

"Black," he said, "and whatever you drink. Which I've never actually known."

"Oat milk latte."

"That's disgusting."

"You lived on concrete."

"I had standards." He handed me my red coat. "Come on."

At twenty to six we went down the stairs from Wacker Drive to the lower level.

The air was the same.

Exhaust and old rain and the river somewhere close.

The orange lights were the same.

But at the bottom of the stairs, across from the loading dock, there was a door I'd never seen open.

It was the old brick warehouse that had stood empty against the river wall for as long as I'd walked this way.

The windows had been boarded all summer.

Now every window was lit.

The big freight door was rolled up, and heat was pouring out of it into the cold in a white cloud you could see.

There were long tables inside, and the smell of bacon, and bunk beds against the back wall with new gray blankets folded on them.

Men were going in.

Men I knew.

The old man with the harmonica who used to play "Moon River" for me badly. The vet in the Bears blanket. The two brothers who fought every morning about the Sox.

Over the freight door somebody had hung a plain painted sign.

KATIE'S.

I stopped walking.

"Quin."

"It was Stuyvesant Holdings' building," he said beside me. "Now it's yours. It opened Sunday night while we were in Tyler. Hot breakfast at twenty to six, every day, forever."

"Every day."

"Forever's in the paperwork. I checked."

The vet in the Bears blanket saw us.

He lifted his hand.

"Hey, Coffee Girl," he called. "Your husband says you're the boss now."

"I guess I am."

"Then tell 'em the eggs need salt."

I laughed, and it came out broken.

The harmonica man came out of the warm doorway carrying a paper cup.

He walked it over to me and put it in my hands.

Coffee.

Black, and too hot, and from a cheap urn.

"Six months you brought us these," he said. "Figured you'd like one handed to you for a change."

I couldn't say anything.

I just held it.

The men went back inside to breakfast.

Quinton walked me past the freight door, past the loading dock, to the concrete ledge under the green steel beam.

His ledge.

It was empty now.

Somebody had swept it.

He sat down on it in his torn coat, exactly where he used to sit, and patted the concrete beside him.

← Chapter 21 · All chapters · Chapter 23 →

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