I Left My Husband Bleeding, and the Mob Boss Said Good novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Fast and Feast

I sank the eight ball in the far corner pocket, and Marwan Karam put down his cue and looked at the table.

"You said you could not play," he said.

"I said I was out of practice."

"You cleared the table."

"My father had one in the back of the store," I said. "I was eleven. I took the grocers' money on Friday nights."

The hookah room was in the basement, behind a door at the bottom of the stairs.

It had a bar with a mirror, a row of brass lamps, and a pool table his father had bought in a good year.

On the shelf the baby monitor sat turned low, with its green light on.

It was the third night of the Ninevites' fast.

For three days we had eaten nothing but tea and bread.

By Wednesday night we were both hungry and light-headed and a little crazy.

My stomach growled.

His growled back.

We looked at each other.

"Pay up," I said.

"What were the stakes?" he said.

"You said whoever lost had to do what the winner said."

"I said no such thing," he said.

"You said it in Arabic," I said. "I was listening."

He laughed, and then he stopped laughing and put his hands in his pockets, and looked at me with his head lowered.

"What does the winner say?" he said.

"Take your shirt off."

He took it off over his head.

He tossed it on the bar.

The lamps put gold on his shoulders and made a shadow of the long scar across his ribs.

"Now come here and chalk my cue," I said.

"Your cue is on the table."

"I don't mean that one."

He came around the table slowly, with a blue square of chalk in his hand.

He held it out to me, and I took his wrist instead and drew his hand to my hip.

The chalk left a blue print on the black cotton of my leggings.

"Again," I said.

He pressed it to my other hip.

His thumbs found the waistband, and he drew the leggings down my thighs, slowly, kneeling as he did.

He left a blue print on each thigh as it came bare.

I stepped out of them.

He stayed on his knees, with his hands on the backs of my legs and his forehead against my stomach, and breathed.

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