The Burning Road to Divorce After the Fire novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Nothing Until It's Signed

Lainey's POV

It was raining ash when Kurt's truck came up the grade.

A late wind had turned on the ridge, and the burned hills were sending their gray flakes down over the barn.

I was on the steps hauling water from the creek in a bucket, with my sleeves pushed up and my hair full of soot.

He got out and stood there with his hands at his sides.

"I came to tell you something," he said. "Then you can throw the bucket at me."

"Is it the tape?"

"I gave the chief my badge this morning."

I put the bucket down.

"Kurt."

"The report is on his desk. I told him everything. Eleven minutes, my name, my signature." He shrugged, and the ash moved on his shoulders. "I'm on leave. They'll probably fire me."

"You did that for me?"

"I did it because it was true."

"Don't," I said. "Don't make it noble. It was so much easier to hate you in a clean story."

"I know."

"Then why did you come up here?"

"Because Brent called me," he said. "He offered me a job to say your tape was fake. I said no. I wanted you to hear it from me before somebody tells you something else."

I looked at him for a long time.

The thing I had been holding against him for two weeks, the eleven minutes, was standing in front of me with its hands open.

I could not hold it any longer.

I did not forgive him.

I only put it down.

"Come inside," I said. "You're bleeding."

He looked at his hand.

He had a long raw blister across the palm from the generator pull cord, torn open.

"That's nothing."

"I'm a tech. I clean worse on Great Danes."

He followed me up the stairs.

I sat him on the bed, because there was nowhere else, and opened the first aid kit and knelt in front of him.

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