I Broke Up With My Poor Boyfriend to Date a Rich Heir novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Dock

Stevie finds Caleb on the night shift with split knuckles, learns he has been sleeping on the dock, and he warns her never to repeat what Gus said.

I found Caleb on the loading dock at midnight, under a row of sodium lights that turned everything orange.

The freight yard sat on the far side of the river, and I had never been there.

He had told me once it was a place for men who needed the hours.

A big man in a reflective vest looked me over from the gate.

"You're the girlfriend," he said.

"I was."

"Third bay. Don't walk behind the forklift."

Caleb was stacking boxes on a pallet by himself.

He wore the same gray work shirt as Saturday, and a dark patch had spread down the back of it.

He heard my shoes on the concrete and didn't turn around.

"You shouldn't be here, Steph."

"Gus Thayer grabbed my wrist at brunch."

That made him turn.

His face was hollow under the orange light, and there were shadows under his eyes I hadn't seen when I lived with him.

"He said my father paid," I said. "He said it wasn't a loan. He said to ask the boy."

Caleb put down the box in his hands.

He set it on the pallet carefully.

"He said that to you."

"He said it to me alone, on a terrace, with his nurse across the room. What loan, Caleb?"

"Did he say it to anyone else?"

"No."

"Then you didn't hear it."

He walked past me to the next stack, and I followed him.

"You gave a man at the party an envelope," I said. "Warner says you rent from them."

"I told you. Catch-up rent."

"You've been out an hour on the first of every month for three years. We lived on lentils and your tips. Whose money was that?"

"Mine."

He lifted a box, and I saw his hand.

The knuckles on his right hand were split open, three red lines crusted over and cracked again.

I took his wrist before I'd decided to.

His skin was hot and rough, and the pulse under my thumb was going hard.

For one second he didn't pull away.

His hand turned over in mine, palm up, and stayed there.

Then his breath caught, and he took his arm back.

"Pallet jack," he said. "It slipped."

"You need that cleaned."

"I need you to go home."

"I don't have a home," I said, and heard how it sounded. "I mean I'm at the Thayers'. I've got a guest room with a lock on it and a robe with my name sewn in."

"You wanted that," he said.

It wasn't an accusation.

He said it flatly, as a fact he'd already accepted and paid for.

I wanted to shout that it was Donna's chair, Donna's life, four thousand dollars I couldn't make, and that he'd stood in front of two hundred people and said okay.

"Why did you say okay?" I asked. "You didn't ask me one question."

"What would I have asked?"

"Anything."

He looked at the box in his arms.

"You told me in front of a whole room that you couldn't live on nothing," he said. "I don't think there was a question left."

That landed harder than the party had.

Behind us a forklift beeped, and a shift whistle sounded across the yard.

The man in the vest was walking over with a first aid kit in one hand.

"Hurley," he said. "Break. You've been on since Friday."

"I'm fine."

"You're sleeping on the cot in the supply room. I'm not blind. Go sit down and let her fix your hand."

Caleb closed his eyes briefly.

"Boss, you're not helping."

"I'm not trying to help you. I'm trying to keep you alive for my own safety record."

The big man held the kit out to me, and I took it.

Caleb didn't argue.

He sat on an overturned crate in the sodium light with his hand resting on his knee, and I knelt in front of him and opened the gauze.

I cleaned each knuckle with the wipe.

He did not make a sound, but his fingers twitched every time I touched a new one.

"You're sleeping here," I said quietly. "You have a whole apartment."

"The apartment is too quiet."

I said nothing to that.

I wrapped the gauze twice around his hand, and when I tied it off, my fingers stayed on his wrist a moment longer than they needed to.

His pulse was still going hard.

So was mine.

"Stevie."

"Yes."

"Look at me."

I looked up.

His brown eyes were steady and tired, and for the first time since the ballroom they weren't kind.

They were afraid.

"Don't repeat what Gus said," he said. "Not to Warner. Not to his mother. Not to anyone with that last name."

"Why?"

"Because they'll know I didn't keep my promise."

"What promise?"

He stood up, pulled his hand free, and picked the box up again.

"Go home, Stevie," he said. "Please."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

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