He Thought I Had Nowhere to Go Until I Disappeared novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: What He Said in March

Nolan's POV

I was on the end of the dock at four in the afternoon, replacing a rotted plank, when she came down the lawn with two mugs and her sleeves pulled over her hands.

I knew her walk.

I had watched it come out of the Dayton library in April and cross a parking lot with an armload of books.

I had sat in my truck and not gotten out.

Ardis had said wait, and I had waited, and then it was summer and then it was fall.

"Alana's gone to find a room in town," Keeley said. "Grandma gave her forty dollars and made her promise to eat."

"That sounds like her."

She handed me a mug and sat on the dock beside the plank I'd pulled up, with her feet hanging over the cold water.

I kept working.

She didn't talk, and I let her not talk.

The nail gun was loud, and the silence afterward was louder.

"You haven't asked what I'm going to do about Corbin," she said.

"You'll tell me or you won't."

"I'm going to take it all back. My mother's money. My name. And I'm going to do it in front of all the people he performed for."

"Good."

"That's it? Good?"

"It's a good plan."

She watched me line up the next board.

"You don't like me very much," she said.

"I didn't."

"Did?"

I set down the nail gun.

I had been carrying this around for seven months, and I'd practiced a better way of saying it than the one that came out.

"March fourteenth," I said. "Her surgery. They took her in at six, and they gave us a waiting room with a bad coffee machine."

Keeley went still.

← Chapter 9 · All chapters · Chapter 11 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend