He Scorned His Substitute Wife, Now He Begs Her Back novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: One Month

Livia walked him half a block down the avenue before she said it.

"I want a month."

Luca stopped on the pavement.

"A month of what?"

"Of nothing. Of nobody."

She kept her hands in her pockets.

"Mirella has a flat in Lisbon with a room I can sleep in. I'm going on Friday. I want thirty days."

He didn't move.

She watched his face, and she waited for the thing she had seen in it for three years: the closing, the flat look.

It didn't come.

"Say why," he said. "Please. Not so I can argue."

"Because I was Mirella for three years, and before that I was the poor girl in Honesdale."

She shook her head.

"I've never had one day where I was only me, and nobody was paying me for it."

"Yes."

"And I don't know what I want," she said.

"Not even now?"

"I knew what I wanted on Saturday night. I wasn't confused for one minute of it. But I'd like to know what I want on a Tuesday when nobody is looking."

He drew a long breath.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Whatever you'd do if I weren't watching. And find out if you'd still do it."

"I'll find out."

"You can write to Zia. Not me. She'll tell me what she likes."

He nodded.

His hands were at his sides and perfectly steady, and she was the one who looked down at them first.

"Livia," he said. "In the boardroom I said it was a failure of nerve."

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