The Stranger I Married novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Suite

"Take me somewhere," I said.

Elias didn't move.

"Maya. You just did the hardest thing of your life. You shouldn't decide anything else tonight."

"I'm not deciding anything else. I decided this on the roof."

"I told you there's something I haven't said."

"I know what you told me."

I took one step into the light under the awning and looked up at him.

"I know there's something you're not saying.

I don't know what it is, and I'm going to find out, and when I do you'd better have a good reason."

"I will."

"Then tonight is mine."

His breath left him.

"Where?" he said.

"Your hotel."

The Hartwell Chicago stood nine blocks away with its scaffolds draped in black netting.

We walked.

He took off his coat halfway there and put it around my shoulders, and I let him, and neither of us said a word.

He used a key card at a side entrance that opened on a service elevator.

The elevator rose twenty-two floors in the dark.

I stood beside him with my shoulder against his arm and felt the heat come off him in waves.

The doors opened on a corridor of unpainted drywall, and at the end of it one finished door.

"The owner's suite," he said.

"It's the only room done.

My father used to sleep here when the hotel was being built.

I haven't been in since the funeral."

"Then I'll be the first thing in it that's new."

He unlocked the door.

The suite was a long room of pale wood with a wall of windows, and the whole city lay below it in strings of light.

There was a wide bed made up in white linen.

I turned around in the middle of the floor, in his coat, and looked at him.

He stood in the doorway, enormous, afraid and absolutely still.

"Close the door, Eli."

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