My Fiancé Chose His Ex, So I Chose Myself novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Over the Shop

The stairs to the apartment over my shop were steep and narrow and turned once in the middle.

Hugh looked up them with my mother's Singer in his arms.

"You said forty pounds."

"It's forty pounds."

"It's forty pounds of iron on a staircase built for elves."

"You carry anchors."

"Anchors don't have a turn in the middle." He started up anyway. "Get the door."

I ran ahead of him and got the door.

It was my door.

I'd had the key cut on Tuesday at the hardware store on 6th, one key, brass, still sharp at the edges.

Nobody had an app.

Hugh came through sideways and set the machine down on the little table by the front window.

He did it as gently as he'd set down the tulips that night at the condo.

He straightened up and rolled his shoulders.

"Where do you want the rest?"

"There's no rest. Nine trash bags and two dress forms."

"That's a whole life in a pickup."

"It's what fit through a broken door."

He looked at me.

Then he went back down for the trash bags without saying anything else, which was the right thing to say.

By eight o'clock it was done.

The apartment was one bedroom and a kitchen the size of a closet.

The radiator under the window banged twice an hour.

We ate takeout on the floor, because I didn't own chairs yet.

Hugh sat with his back to the wall and his long legs out.

The chopsticks looked like toothpicks in his hands.

"My lawyer called this afternoon," he said.

"About the ring?"

"About the condo. She's back in it."

I put my carton down.

"Since when?"

"Since the middle of November, when Clint took an investor's offer on the house."

"How did she get in?"

"Her lawyer says she lived in my unit long enough to count as a tenant." He shrugged one big shoulder. "Fine. A tenant gets thirty days. I sent the notice the next morning."

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