I Was His Waiting Room novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: What He Saw That Night

"Go ahead," I said.

Kiera's chair stopped halfway down the ramp.

"Tell them," I said. "And while you're at it, tell them I paid his office rent. The first eight months. Fourteen thousand four hundred dollars. He never paid it back."

She turned her head.

For the first time since I'd known her, she didn't have a face ready.

She hadn't known.

Ronan had told her about my toothbrush and not about the rent.

Down in the driveway he got out of the car to fold her chair into the back.

He saw me standing at the top of the ramp in my one good sweater.

He opened his mouth.

He shut it, lifted the chair, and drove away.

The front door opened behind me.

Niall came out without his jacket, in a navy sweater with the sleeves pushed up.

"What did she say to you?"

"She's going to tell Ronan's investors I slept with him for his money."

He looked at the empty driveway.

"Did you?"

"I paid his rent."

He laughed, once, short.

Then he looked at me.

"Get in the truck," he said.

"Why?"

"Because my mother's watching us from the front window, and I'd like to have this conversation somewhere she isn't."

He drove to the river.

There was a gravel pull-off by the Neponset where the trees came down to the water and nobody else was parked.

He turned the engine off. The heater ticked as it cooled.

The sun was going down orange behind the bare trees.

"Tell me all of it," he said. "Not the version for the lawyer."

So I did.

The things I had never said to anyone but Kerry.

The company party I wasn't invited to and the photo of it in his lobby.

Christmas at his mother's, where I sat at the kids' end of the table as the girl from three doors down.

The investors I never met. The rent nobody mentioned again.

Three years of Tuesdays and Thursdays, all of it unpaid.

I talked until the sun was gone.

He didn't interrupt once.

When I stopped, he was quiet so long I thought he'd fallen asleep.

"Your turn," I said.

He looked at the dark water.

"Brendan called me from the car," he said. "Ten past one in the morning. He couldn't say where he was. I could hear her screaming behind him."

His hands were on the wheel, at ten and two, like he was still driving.

"I found it from the sirens. Storrow, by the Fiedler footbridge. I got there before the second ambulance."

"You saw them."

"I saw the car first. I knew the plate before I could see the people."

He swallowed.

"My first thought was who's going to find out. Not is anybody hurt. Not is my brother alive. Who's going to find out."

The heater ticked.

"Then they cut the roof off and I saw her face. One of her shoes was in the road. Brendan was sitting on the curb behind a cruiser with his hands cuffed, saying her name."

"Niall."

"I wrote that deal so I'd never have to think that first thought again. I've never told anyone. Not Mam. Not Bren."

I reached over and took his right hand off the wheel.

His fingers were cold.

I held them in both of mine until they weren't.

"You told me," I said.

"I did."

"Is your house far?"

He turned his head.

"Four minutes."

"Is there a window on it?"

The corner of his mouth went up, slowly.

"Several. I own blinds."

"Then drive."

He didn't start the engine.

"Maura. Say it plain. I don't want to guess with you."

"I want to go home with you. I want you to take me to bed. Plain enough?"

He started the engine.

His house was gray-shingled at the end of a dead-end street, smaller than I'd pictured.

He'd rebuilt it himself, room by room, the year after his father died.

The porch light was on a timer. There was no dog bowl anywhere.

He stopped me on the front step with one hand on my waist.

"Say it again," I said, before he could.

"I'm taking you to bed."

"Yes."

He unlocked the door.

His hand was still on my waist when the door closed behind us.

The house was warm and dark and smelled like coffee and sawdust.

I turned in his arms before he could say anything.

I pulled his sweater up by the hem and over his head.

It landed somewhere on the floor.

No t-shirt.

Just him.

Bare chest, broad shoulders, gray eyes watching me like I was the one who'd just been stripped.

"Put your hands on me," I said.

"Where?"

"You rebuilt this house. Figure it out."

He put one hand at the small of my back and pulled me flush against him.

← Chapter 15 · All chapters · Chapter 17 →

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