The Tideflats King Claimed the Surveyor Who Trusts No One, and My Signature Was His Brother's Alibi novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: What I Signed

Lena's POV

I woke at six with the plaster against my spine and the chair by the window empty.

For one second I did not know where I was.

Then the whole night came back, the glass, his mouth saying mine, the way he had held my weight against a window forty feet over the freezers.

I lay still and took inventory.

My thighs ached.

My jaw ached.

The sheet smelled of him.

I was not afraid, and that frightened me more than anything.

He stood in the doorway with two cups of coffee.

He had put on a clean shirt and left it unbuttoned.

"You did not leave," Niko said.

"I thought about it."

"I know.

"I watched you think."

He set one cup on the nightstand and stayed at the foot of the bed, where I could see him.

"I made it from the can you saw me open," he said.

I looked through the door at the lid on the counter.

I drank.

It was terrible and hot, and I held it in both hands.

"I have to tell you something," I said.

"You do not have to."

"I know that.

"I'm telling you first."

He put his own cup down.

I had not planned it.

I did not know I was going to do it until I heard my own voice.

"I wrote the Sea Marija report in a motel," I said.

"I was twenty-three.

"My uncle sent me with photographs and a cooler of swabs, and he stayed at the yard.

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