My Groom Fled the Wedding, So His Father and His Guides Kept Me novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Hank's POV

Hank's POV

She came into the boathouse on Friday night, the third night I had slept on the planks, and she did not knock.

I was sitting on an upturned bucket with a wool blanket over my knees and a dock line in my hands.

I had been tying a bowline over and over.

My hands would not stay still, and that was all I had left to do with them.

Kristin shut the door behind her and stood with her back against it in her heavy coat.

Her braid was loose over one shoulder, and her cheeks were red from the cold.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I put the rope down.

"Stand up," she said.

I stood.

"Not there. Over by the lantern."

I went where she pointed, and I stood in the yellow light with my hands at my sides.

She walked the length of the room slowly.

She stopped at the workbench and put her palms on the edge of it.

She hopped up and sat on the wood with her boots dangling.

"Look at me," she said.

I looked.

It was not hard.

It had been hard for four years, and now it was the only thing I wanted to do.

"Say it," Kristin said. "All of it. Everything you didn't say."

"Where do I start?"

"Where you started."

I swallowed.

"The Fourth," I said. "The lights went out at ten."

"Keep going."

"I went down to check the lines, and the boathouse was cold. Devon's shirt was on the nail. I put it on."

My throat worked.

"I got to the end of the dock, and I heard somebody coming behind me."

Her face did not change, but her fingers curled on the bench.

"I thought it was a guest," I said. "I turned around, and it was you."

"What did I do?" she said.

"You said his name. Not loud. You said it glad, as if you had waited all night to say it."

"And then?" she said.

"And then you had both hands in my shirt."

She watched my mouth.

"And you kissed me back."

"Yes."

"Why?" she said.

"Because I had been dead for eleven years," I said, "and you put your mouth on mine, and I woke up."

After I walked away from her that night, I stood in this boathouse doorway with the cold dock line in my fist.

It shook the whole hour, and I let it.

She breathed out, long and shaky.

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