Sweetheart Wife novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: First Night

I did not ask him that night.

I meant to.

I stood in the blue bedroom at the end of the hall with my duffel on the quilt, and I rehearsed it.

What did you do to get out?

Hester had gone to bed at nine with a hot water bottle and a paperback, and the whole big house had gone quiet around me.

Through the wall I could hear Jonas moving.

A drawer opened and closed.

A floorboard creaked.

Then the shower came on, and I stood very still and listened to it.

I was twenty-six, and he was thirty-one, and I was married to him by a piece of paper I had signed in a haze.

I had not been touched in nearly three years.

The last man to touch me had been a line cook in Anchorage who talked about his truck.

I put my hand flat against the wall.

The water shut off.

I went out into the hall before I could think better of it.

He came out of the bathroom with a towel slung low on his hips and water running down his chest.

The scar began at his right wrist and ran up his arm.

It crossed his shoulder and spilled over the top of his chest in a pale ridge.

He stopped when he saw me.

For a second neither of us said anything.

"Willa," he said.

"You said I could say when."

His breath went out of him.

"I did say that."

"I'm saying it."

"You've had the worst two days of your life," Jonas said roughly. "You don't have to."

"I know I don't."

I crossed the hall and put my palm on his chest, on the shiny skin of the scar.

He flinched, and then he went completely still, and I felt his heart slam under my hand.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"No."

"Does it feel?"

"Everything feels," he said hoarsely.

I pressed my mouth to the scar below his collarbone.

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