Too Late, Alpha, I'm Your Pen Pal novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Dear Moth

The letter came on Thursday, in the afternoon mail, with a real stamp.

Gerda laid it on the counter without a word.

It was addressed in his tall hand to Moth, The Room Over Lund's General Store.

He had known exactly where to send it.

I carried it upstairs, and read it standing in my socks.

Dear Moth,

I know what you are not saying.

I am not going to say it for you.

It has to be yours to say, or I will never be sure it was freely given.

Whatever you are afraid I will do when you say it, I think you are wrong.

Come to the fire anyway.

L.

I read it four times.

Then I sat on the edge of the bed with the page in both hands, until the light went out of the window.

The room over the store was small.

It held a bed, a table by the window, a lamp, a drawer of his letters, and the typewriter with its low "e".

Nobody went up.

Gerda had never come up in three years.

I heard the stair creak.

I did not need to ask who.

He knocked once, softly, with two knuckles.

I opened the door, and he stood on the landing in the dark, with his hand braced on the frame and his hair tied back.

He looked at the page in my fist.

"I said it was yours to say," he said. "I didn't say I'd stay away."

"You said you wouldn't say it for me."

"I won't."

"Then what are you doing on my stairs?"

"I want to see your room."

My throat tightened.

It was the one place he had never been, and the one place I had never let anyone near.

I stepped back.

He came in, and the ceiling was low enough that he had to duck.

He stopped in the middle of the floor with his head almost touching the beam.

He looked at everything.

The narrow bed.

The shelf of paperbacks.

The table by the window, with the typewriter in a square of lamplight and a sheet of paper still rolled in.

He did not touch it.

"This is where you do it," he said.

"Do what?"

"Get me through the week."

I locked the door and leaned on it.

"You don't know what I'm going to say."

"I don't," he said. "I'm not going to ask. I want to be in here with you, and I want to watch you not answer."

His eyes were dark.

"I'll take every other answer you've got."

I crossed the room and kissed him.

He caught me round the waist and lifted me, and my feet left the floor.

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