Not His Bride Anymore novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Terms

I did not go home to my mother.

In the car outside the loft, I put the phone face down on my knee and told Elliot to drive anywhere else.

He drove to the river.

He lived on the ninth floor of an old brick warehouse that had been turned into apartments, with big windows and almost no furniture.

He put my boxes in the second bedroom and stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

"There's a lock on the inside," he said. "I'll sleep on the sofa. You don't have to explain anything to me."

"My mother lied to me today."

"Yes."

"You heard it."

"I heard it."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Because I don't know what she lied about." His gray eyes did not move off my face. "I'd rather tell you a thing I know than a thing I guess."

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

My right hand hurt.

I looked down and found the ring still clenched in it, so tight the little green stone had bitten into my palm.

There was blood on my fingers, a thin line of it running to my wrist.

I had not felt it at all.

"Come here," Elliot said.

He took me to the kitchen and turned the cold tap on.

He held my hand under the water, and his hand was warm and rough around my wrist.

The blood ran pink and then clear.

He pressed a clean towel into my palm and kept it there.

His thumb lay over the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was loud and stupid.

I felt it stop being a bandage.

His thumb did not move, and neither did I.

I looked up.

He was not looking at my hand.

He was looking at my mouth, and his breath had gone shallow.

It lasted only a moment.

Then he blinked and took his hand away.

"You'll want a plaster," he said, in a voice that was almost normal.

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