I Woke Up at the Altar and Said No to the Mob Heir Who Let Me Die, but He Remembers Too novel · Chapter 40 of 40
Chapter 40: Plans
The parish hall went silent.
Then three hundred people laughed at once.
The boatyard men pounded the table. The old driver had to be helped back into his chair.
Una laughed so hard she sat down on the floor in her sage green dress.
Nessa stood on her chair with the microphone, waiting, very serious.
"I mean it," she said into it. "A sister. Not a brother. Brothers wipe wrong."
The hall went over again.
Cormac looked at me.
I looked at him.
He crossed to Nessa's chair and held out his hand for the microphone. She gave it to him with great reluctance.
"Thank you for your announcement," he said to the room. "We'll take it under advisement."
"What's advisement?"
"It means Orla decides."
He handed me the microphone.
Three hundred people waited.
"Terms," I said.
The hall roared.
Nessa nodded, satisfied, and climbed down to go and find more cake.
That night, in a small hotel by the harbor, he unlocked the door of our room and held it open for me.
He didn't go in first.
He waited, the way he always had, until I took his hand and pulled him in after me.
Then he closed the door behind us.
He didn't lock it.
He stood with his back against it and looked at me in the dress I'd made, with the lamp on and the harbor black in the window.
"Turn around," he said quietly. "Please."
I turned.
He found the first of the little buttons down my back, and his knuckles brushed my spine.
I shivered all the way down.
"There are a lot of them," I said. "I sewed every one."
"I know. I'm going to undo every one."
His mouth touched the back of my neck, just above the lace.
My knees went.
The harbor was black glass behind him.
He crossed to me in two steps.
His hands found my waist, and he set his mouth on my shoulder, just above the lace of my sleeve.
"Tell me what you want," he said against my skin.
"Everything. Tonight. I want everything."
He made a sound low in his chest.
His hands came to the front of my dress, to the little covered buttons at my wrists.
He didn't look away from my face.
"These too?"
"Every last one."
He worked the first button loose with his thumb, his fingers steady.
My pulse jumped against his knuckles.
He opened the second, then the third, then lifted my hand and pressed his mouth to the inside of my wrist.
My breath went.
"You sewed a red thread in the hem," he said. "For my first honest paycheck."
"To remind you."
"I remember." His lips moved up my arm, under the sleeve. "I remember the first time I saw you, too. In the shop. You had a pencil in your hair and you looked at me like you'd never seen a man before."
"I hadn't. Not one I wanted."
He laughed, low and rough.
His hands went back to the buttons at my back, working down.
Each one gave with a tiny sound.
The dress loosened, the weight of the skirt shifting.
"You wanted me then?"
"No." I turned my head, and my mouth brushed his jaw. "I wanted to want you. I didn't know what that meant until the night you sat in my doorway and told me I wasn't a thing in a box."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–20 of I Woke Up at the Altar and Said No to the Mob Heir Who Let Me Die, but He Remembers Too are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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