Chapter 13: Who Was Driving

Ward read the message twice and laid my phone face down on the counter.

"Friday is three days away," he said.

"She wants me on a plane," I said.

"I know what she wants."

His hand was still in my hair, and he took it away slowly.

"If you go back, I'll drive you to the airport myself," he said. "If you stay, she sends that photo to my board."

"You could lose your program."

"I could."

"Then I'll go."

"You won't," Ward said. "You already told me no, in this kitchen, an hour ago. I'm a grown man who kissed a grown woman. Let them look."

I opened my mouth to argue, and somebody rang Dot's gate bell.

It was ten past six in the morning.

Ward went to the window over the sink, and the line of his shoulders changed.

"It's him," he said. "He's alone. He parked at the corner and walked."

I put on Dot's robe over my pajamas and went out to the porch in my socks.

Gavin stood at the bottom of the steps without a coat.

He had not shaved, and his shirt was the one he had worn to the hospital.

Dot's garden hose lay coiled by the railing, and he looked at it and then at me.

"I'm not here to beg," he said. "I'm here to tell you."

I sat down on the top step.

Ward stayed in the doorway behind me, one hand on the frame.

Gavin lowered himself onto the bottom step, two steps below me, and talked to his own knees.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Brought His First Love Home Again, So I Left from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.