Chapter 20: The Night

Nathan's POV

"Do you still love her?" Danielle said.

She asked it quietly, sitting on the edge of my desk with her shoes on the carpet and her hands gripping the wood on either side of her.

I did not look away from her, and I did not take time to arrange the answer.

"I loved the woman in my head," I said. "I loved what she let me hear. That woman wasn't real, and I know it now."

"That isn't what I asked."

"No." I took one breath. "I don't love Claire. I'm sorry for her. I'll be sorry for her for a long time, and I'm not going back."

Danielle looked at me for a long moment.

Then she let go of the desk.

"Good," she said. "That's the answer."

"Are you asking anything else?"

"Yes." Her mouth turned up on one side. "Do you want to come home with me?"

We did not make it through the afternoon.

The messenger took the canvas bag at noon, and I signed for it with a steady hand.

At two o'clock the reporters outside Rowan thinned to three.

By six, Danielle had stood up from her desk four times and sat down again.

I had read the same page of the Tolland file until the words ran together.

At seven she put her coat on and said, "Now."

Her apartment was on the top floor of a brick building near the river, with a long window and almost no furniture.

She did not turn on the overhead light.

She turned around in the middle of the room, and I shut the door behind us.

"Rule one," I said.

"I know the rule."

"You wrote it. I'm only checking that you remember."

"I remember." She took hold of my tie and pulled it loose. "I'm overruling it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Plans My Promotion, I'm Planning Divorce from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.