Dying to Marry Him novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Nine Years

I came out of the library with the pages held flat against my chest.

Rook stood where I had left him, with one boot an inch behind the line he could not cross.

Loretta stood next to him with her arms folded. She looked at my face and unfolded them.

"I wrote you," I said. "Nine years ago, at my mother's kitchen table."

He did not move. The mist around his new eyes went very still.

"Show me," he said.

I slid the top page free and laid it in his bare hand.

He held it close. His eyes went across the first line, then the second, and I watched a man read for the first time.

His lips moved on the opening words.

"Candels," he said.

"I couldn't spell," I said, and my voice cracked, and I let it. "I was twenty-two."

He turned the page and found the margin. He touched the blue ink with his thumb.

"Keep the ugly stitch," he read. "That is my glove."

"That's your glove."

"I did not know I had a first page."

He read it all twice. Then he lowered it, and what I could see of his face was hard to look at.

"How long has it been for you?" he asked.

"Nine years."

"The house runs faster than your world. Nine of yours is nearly thirty of mine."

I made myself ask the next thing. "What was it like?"

He answered plainly, which was worse than if he had shouted.

"In the first year the chapel was empty. The candles lit themselves and nobody came."

"Every night I said 'Make your vow' to the pews, because it was the only line I had."

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