The Billionaire Janitor Is Back! novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Snow

I caught him at the bottom of the front steps, in the parking lot, in the snow.

I was in heels and a thin green dress, and I had not taken my coat.

"Malachi!"

He stopped by the groundskeeper's truck, with his back to me and snow settling on his shaved head.

I stood ten feet away, shivering.

"You knew," he said, without turning around.

"Yes."

"On the first of February."

"Yes."

"Before the clerk. Before the dollar. Before I sat in your kitchen and said my own name like a man confessing to murder."

"Yes."

He turned.

His face was very still, and his eyes were pale and bright in the lamplight.

"And you let me tell it. All of it. My mother. Singapore."

"You sat on the floor and held my hand, and you said, 'Thank you for telling me.'"

"I know."

"What were you doing, Edie?"

"I was a coward."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the true thing," I said, and my voice broke. "You said every night, one true thing. That's mine. I was a coward, and I've been one since February."

He stood there, breathing steam.

I thought he would get in the truck.

Instead he said, flat and quiet, "I know you knew."

I stopped shaking.

"What?"

"I knew you knew, Edie."

"You couldn't have."

"There was a magazine in the staff room in February."

"I saw you reading it at lunch. The next morning one page was gone from the middle."

He pulled a hand over his face.

"I figured it out by March. You started looking at my hands."

"I looked at your hands all the time."

"Before February, you looked at them like they were just hands."

"After, you looked like you were counting."

I laughed.

It came out wet and ugly in the cold.

"You knew. And you took the job of my husband anyway."

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