Chapter 6: Half the Truth

Gavin did not ask me in the atrium.

He walked me out through the back, past the loading dock, into his car.

He drove us to the brownstone on Alder Street where we had lived for five years in the dark.

Nobody had ever seen us walk in together.

He shut the door and stood in the hall with his coat still on.

"Why were you in my father's building, Hazel?"

I had practiced the answer in the elevator for two days.

"My father owned a shop," I said. "Brennan Tool and Die. Your father's company bought it nine years ago. My father died that winter."

"I know that much."

"I never knew how it was sold. My mother won't talk about it. So I took a job in the only building where the answer was kept."

"For five years?"

"At first."

He took off his coat.

"At first."

"Then I met you," I said. "And I stopped looking."

It was a true sentence, and it was not the whole truth.

I watched it land on his face.

I had my black notebook in my bag, and he had never once asked what I wrote in it.

He took my face in his hands and looked at the bruise.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You were hiding me from him. I didn't know how to say my father was a reason for it."

"Hazel."

"I'm telling you now."

He rested his forehead against mine.

"Thank you," he said, very low.

I felt like a thief.

I kissed him so he would stop talking.

He carried me up the stairs.

He undressed me slowly by the lamp, one button at a time, kissing each place the blouse uncovered.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Video Called Me His Mistress, But I Was His Wife from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.