Madly Yours novel · Chapter 5 of 32

Chapter 5: Two Liars

The last guests left at eleven.

A housekeeper showed me to my room at the end of the east hall.

Separate bedrooms, just like the terms said.

Leland's door was at the other end.

I took off Lexi's dress and put on jeans and a sweater.

I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the house.

A car door in the street.

The clock on the landing.

Somebody's footsteps going down the back stairs.

They meant to give him more of whatever it was.

I didn't owe him anything.

I'd known him for a day and a half.

He had kissed me, and then he'd swallowed two pills in front of fifty people.

I got up.

The hall was dark.

I walked the whole length of it in my socks.

Under his door there was a line of light.

I knocked.

Nothing.

I knocked harder, and opened it.

He was not in bed.

He was not unconscious.

He was hanging from a steel bar across the doorway of his dressing room, shirtless, pulling himself up.

Up, slow, chin over the bar.

Down, slow.

Up.

The muscles across his back moved under his skin.

There was sweat in the hollow of his spine.

The cane leaned against the wall six feet away.

He came down on the last one and dropped to his feet and turned.

He saw me and went perfectly still.

For a long second neither of us moved.

Then his eyes went to the bedside table.

A glass jar sat there, the kind you keep cotton balls in.

It was full to the lid with small white pills.

He picked up his shirt and didn't put it on.

He signed, slower than usual.

You saw that.

I nodded.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

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