When Love Walked Away novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Night Shift

That night the house was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator think.

Gabe had made eggs because neither of us had eaten, and we had pushed them around two plates and given up.

He rinsed the dishes with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

I sat on the counter, because the chairs had become hers in my head, and watched his back.

"I should go," he said, to the window over the sink.

"You should."

"Theresa."

"I told you soon on that porch. I'm saying it's soon."

He turned off the water.

He dried his hands on the towel, one finger at a time, and did not look at me.

"I need you to be sure," he said. "Not sad. Not lonely. Sure."

"I'm all three."

"That's not what I asked."

"I'm thirty-two years old, Gabe. My daughter is in the ground, and I walked into a room today and made sixty women look at what they did."

"I know."

"I want to feel something that isn't that. I want it to be you. I have wanted it to be you for two years."

"Two years."

"Since the night you brought the thermos to my office at midnight and didn't say anything about it."

His mouth moved, almost a smile.

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