My Husband's Smart House Only Listens to Her novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Keys

Colleen went home at nine, and she took the rest of the noodles with her.

"Lock up," she said at the door. "Both of you. And I mean the doors."

When the van's taillights had gone, the workshop was quiet except for the heater.

Brogan stood at the bench with his back to me, wiping a screwdriver that was already clean.

"Say it," I said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you've been chewing since the reporter."

He set the screwdriver down.

"After Thursday," he said, "when he's finished, you'll have a choice. The house is yours, Mara. Your name on the deed, your mother's money in the foundation. It's a good house."

"It has a cold entryway and a very rude shoe cabinet."

"It's a good house with a man's fingerprints removed." He turned around. "You'll want to go home to it. I'd understand."

I looked at him standing there, braced for it.

That was what the wedding had left in him.

He still expected me to turn back to my flowers.

I went to my bag and took out the deed folder, the grey one I'd carried out of the pantry on the worst afternoon of my life.

I walked across the floor and put it in his hands.

"What's this?"

"Both our names are on it, mine and his. Take it."

"Mara."

"Sell it, burn it, paint it purple, give it to the cat."

I pressed his fingers shut around it.

"I would sleep in this garage on a cot before I'd live in a house that spent three years teaching me to wait outside."

He didn't speak.

"That's the answer," I said. "Does it fit?"

"It fits," he said, and his voice was shaking. "God, it fits."

He dropped the folder on the bench without looking where it landed.

When he kissed me this time, it wasn't careful and it wasn't rough.

It was slow, and his hands held my jaw, and I felt his thumbs trembling against my cheeks.

"Business only, Pellam?" I whispered.

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