Old Maid For My Room, Young Maid For His Bed, I Kicked All Three Out novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: What He Asked Her

Erik's POV

I got back from the county facility at nine that night, and Jo was sitting on her own front step in her mother's coat.

The snow had stopped.

The lawn was white all the way down to the street, with one set of tracks leading off it, and one suitcase-sized dent at the end of the walk where Craig had stood.

She had a mug between her hands that had gone cold.

"Dorothea?" she said.

"Her sister knew her. She sat on the bed and held her hand and didn't say a word for an hour."

"Good."

I sat on the step beside her, one stair down, so we were level.

I had thought about what I would ask her the whole way home.

I had not planned to be any good at it.

"Can I stay tonight?" I said.

She looked at the lawn for a long time.

"Not yet," she said.

It went into me clean and deep, and I let it.

"All right."

"It isn't that I don't want you here."

"I know."

"Eli went upstairs and put every stuffed animal he has in a ring around his bed, to keep the house safe. He's five." Her voice shook. "I put him there. I'm the one who has to be the same person he went to sleep with."

"Jo."

"If you're here in the morning, that is a different house to wake up in. He can have one thing at a time."

"Then I'm not going to ask you to hurry."

"You'll be on your couch at the cabin?"

"I'll be in the truck at the curb."

"It's twenty degrees."

"I've slept in worse. I'd like to see your front door from where I am."

She said nothing.

After a minute she put her cold hand on top of mine, on the step, and left it there.

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