Tell Me Not to Love You novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Midnight at the Boathouse

The ravine stair at Windward has ninety-one steps, and I counted every one of them going down.

I told myself I was going to say no.

I told myself again at step fifty, and again at step eighty, when the lake wind found the gap between my coat and my neck.

The boathouse stood at the bottom with one yellow lamp lit inside.

Garrick was on the dock, sitting on an overturned crate with his elbows on his knees.

He stood up when he heard me.

"You came," he said.

"I came to say it louder."

"Then say it."

I stopped in front of him, close enough to see my breath cross his.

"No," I said.

"That was a normal volume."

"I'm working up to it."

He laughed, low and helpless, and the sound went straight down my spine.

"Come inside. It's warmer, and I won't make you sit on a crate."

The boathouse was one long room of old wood and varnish.

Canoes were racked along the wall, and a quilt lay thrown over a daybed under the lamp.

He had brought a thermos.

I sat on the very end of the daybed, and he took the other end, and the thermos sat between us.

"Two summers ago," he said, "I came home for my father's funeral and couldn't sleep."

He turned the cap of the thermos in his fingers.

"I have been trying to thank you for that light ever since."

"And in March I told you to marry someone your mother picked."

"You did."

"I thought it was the kind thing," I said. "It was the cowardly thing."

"Sol."

"Say it again. Tell me why I shouldn't."

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