Wash Her Feet novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: His Mother's Name

"Joan Marie Kessel," I said, so he would hear me say it.

Rafe put his forehead against the steering wheel, and his shoulders shook once.

I opened the truck door and stood there in the wet grass until he looked up.

"Come inside," I said.

"I shouldn't."

"I didn't ask what you should."

He followed me up the path.

In the kitchen I put the ledger on the table, closed, and the key beside it, and I turned around.

"I'm going to give them everything," I said. "The house, the money, all of it. My father asked me to, and I would have done it anyway. I'm not asking you to forgive me."

"I'm not the one who has to."

"Then don't talk about it."

I took one step.

"You said you'd keep your hands to yourself," I said. "Rule one."

"Hallie." His voice was low. "You've cried all night. You're grieving. I'm not going to be one more thing that happens to you."

"You're not something that happens to me."

I put both hands on his chest.

"Freeze," I said.

He looked down at me.

I watched it reach him, slowly, and I saw the corner of his mouth move.

"First one to move or talk loses," I said. "The loser does what the winner says."

"You're going to win," he said.

"You talked."

"Hell."

"That's one forfeit," I said. "Stand still."

He did.

I took his jacket off his shoulders and let it fall on my father's kitchen floor.

I pulled his shirt up over his head.

He raised his arms for it, and I had never seen anything as fine as his chest in that window light, broad and scarred across the ribs.

I laid my palm over his heart and felt it pounding.

I kissed the base of his throat, and he did not move.

I kissed down the center of him to the top of his belt, and a muscle jumped under my mouth.

His hands were clenched at his sides.

"Come upstairs," I said, and I took him by the belt.

My bedroom was at the end of the upstairs hall, with a narrow white bed I had slept in since I was fifteen.

I stood him at the foot of it.

I stripped off my father's robe and the T-shirt under it and stood there in nothing but my underwear in the light.

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