He Protected My Baby's Killer, So I Left Him novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: Rule One
That night I went back to the trailer on Hope Street, because my aunt had told me to stop pacing the apartment.
It was after eleven, and the yard was dark except for the one lamp.
Elio had a first-aid kit open on the desk.
"Show me the hand," he said.
"It's fine."
"It's blistering. You scrubbed it with stripper for half a day."
I held it out, and he took it in both of his and turned it over under the lamp.
His hands were big and warm and dry.
He dabbed something cool across my palm, and I watched his face instead of my hand.
He had a small white line through his left eyebrow I hadn't noticed before.
"Where did you get the burn?" I said.
He looked at the back of his own hand, the pale shiny patch.
"The Buick. I grabbed the door handle when it came out of the water, and the engine block was still hot." He shrugged. "I was twenty-one. I didn't know yet that you can't help someone who is already dead."
I put my other hand over the scar.
I hadn't meant to.
He went completely still.
His skin was warm under my palm, and the ridge of the burn was smooth.
Neither of us moved.
I felt his pulse in the back of his hand, going hard, and I thought: it's the lamp, it's the hour, it's the day he's had.
He was breathing slowly through his nose.
"I need to say something," I said, "and you can't answer me yet."
"All right."
"You stood on a chair at my party and said one sentence."
"I did."
"Then you let them walk you out. And you waited seven months. You never came to my door. You knew who he was, and you knew I was marrying him, and you didn't knock."
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