He Hid Me Twelve Years and Paraded Her, So I Quit Both novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: You'll Go Back

Lacey emailed the recording to Walter, to Bea and to me before she left the building.

She cried at the elevator, and Jonah asked a coworker to drive her home.

By noon the loft was quiet.

I stood at the window with my arms wrapped around myself, looking at the river.

Jonah stayed at the kitchen counter and did not come near me.

He had not said ten words since the hallway.

"You're doing it again," I said.

"Doing what?"

"Standing across the room like I might break something."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"I heard him," he said. "I heard what he said. Twelve years, Nell. He said he still loves you."

"He also said he took my whole life away."

"Both of those can be true." He gave me back my own line, and it was not funny. "I've been with you for one night. He's had twelve years. You were nineteen when you met him. People go back to the person they spent their whole youth with."

"People like that go back because they don't have a choice."

"You have a choice."

"I've made it."

"You made it in a hallway with the adrenaline up." His voice was very even. "I want you to make it again next week, when you're calm. I want to be sure you're not just angry at him and using me to prove it."

I crossed the floor and pushed him in the chest, hard, with both hands.

He rocked back a step and looked at me with surprise.

"You think I'm angry," I said. "I'm furious. I'm also not stupid. I know exactly what I want."

"Nell."

"I have not been touched like that in years. I haven't been looked at like that in twelve." My voice shook. "Last night you watched me the entire time. And now you want to give me a way out? I don't want a way out. I want you."

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