He Begged Me to Forgive Her, Then Lost Everything novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Void

Hattie dropped us at the lake house at one in the morning and refused to come in.

"Gurney thinks I've died," she said through the truck window. "Text me when you stop shaking."

"I'm not shaking."

"Honey, you've been shaking since the toast. It's a very tasteful tremor."

She drove off with her hazards on, laughing and crying at once.

In the kitchen I stood under the hanging lamp in the blue dress and found she was right.

My hands would not stay still.

I unpinned the garnet brooch with fingers that fumbled and set it on the windowsill.

Tiernan leaned in the doorway and did not touch me.

"Three years," I said. "I told my father I was married."

"He walked me down the hall to a man who already had a wife."

"Now every phone in that ballroom has it, and I have to be sad, and I'm not sad."

"What are you?"

"Furious. And I want to stop thinking."

I crossed the kitchen and put both hands flat on his chest.

"Take this dress off me, Tiernan."

His eyes dropped to the zipper at my neck, then came back up slowly.

"Turn around," he said.

I didn't turn around right away.

I stood with both hands still pressed to his chest and let the threat of it settle between us.

The kitchen was quiet except for the wood stove and the sound of my own breathing.

Then I turned and faced the counter.

The butcher block was cold under my palms.

The window in front of me held the dark lake and my own reflection, pale and small in the blue dress.

Tiernan stepped in behind me.

I felt the heat of him before he touched me, and then his knuckles grazed the back of my neck.

His fingers found the tiny tab of the zipper.

He pulled it down one inch.

The sound was the loudest thing in the room.

"You asked me to take this off," he said.

"Yes."

"Then you'll stand still and let me."

The zipper slid lower.

His other hand came to rest on the counter beside mine, not touching me, just there.

I watched his reflection lean in, his mouth near my ear.

"Stop thinking," he said.

"I'm trying."

"Try harder."

The zipper reached the base of my spine and stopped.

He took the fabric at my shoulders and peeled it down my arms.

The dress fell away from me in a whisper of silk and pooled at my feet.

I stood in the black lace bra and nothing else, still facing the window.

"Step out of it," he said.

I did.

He kicked the dress aside with one boot.

"Now the heels."

I bent to unbuckle the straps, but his hand caught my shoulder.

"No. You stay where you are."

He knelt behind me and lifted one foot, then the other, sliding each black heel off and setting them aside.

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