Chapter 12: Under the Streetlight

The storm broke at eleven that night.

I was standing at the kitchen window watching the rain blow sideways across the river.

When I turned around, Rafe was holding my coat.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere I should have gone a long time ago."

He drove us to the bus stop on the edge of the old campus.

It was the same one.

There was a bench and a shelter with a cracked roof.

On the corner stood a streetlight that had been replaced years ago.

Rain hammered the pavement.

Rafe stopped the car and sat looking out at the light.

"This is stupid," he said.

"No."

"If I'm wrong..."

"Then it falls on the two of us, and we know."

I took his hand.

We got out and walked across the wet pavement together, and I felt him stiffen at every step.

We stopped directly under the streetlight.

The lamp buzzed above us, yellow and steady, with the rain slanting through the beam.

Rafe's face tipped up.

He was breathing in short, hard pulls.

"Justine."

"Look at me, not at it."

He looked at me.

"Nineteen," I said. "I was holding your umbrella, I was soaking wet, and you looked at nothing else on that street."

"You were."

"Then tell me what you want."

"I want to kiss you under this light."

"Do it."

He took my face in both hands, and the rain ran down both of us, and he kissed me.

I tasted rain and salt.

He kissed me slowly.

The streetlight hummed and flickered and went on shining.

Nothing fell.

When he lifted his head, his eyes were wet.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The System Admitted Its Mistake, So I Offered Him a Divorce from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.