One Date, One Man, Never Twice: My Rule After the Divorce novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Morning
It rained on Saturday morning, a flat gray October rain that ran down the bedroom window and filled the gutter.
I woke before him.
I lay on my side under the quilt, in my own bed, and looked at a man's face in the daylight.
It was the first time I had ever done that without a husband on the other side of it.
It was also the first time in a year that I had done it at all.
Nick slept on his stomach with one arm under the pillow and his black hair stuck up at the nape.
There was a crease from the sheet across his cheek.
His flat nose was pressed into the pillow.
He breathed through his mouth, with a small sound at the end of each breath.
On my nightstand, beside the clock, was the lamp.
He had brought it over in a grocery bag on Tuesday, a cheap brass thing with a yellow shade.
He plugged it in without saying a word.
"Your light's too white," he had said. "Mine's better."
It was on now.
He had turned it on when we went to bed, and neither of us had turned it off.
It made a small warm circle in the gray room, on the quilt, on his shoulder, on the mole on my own collarbone.
I looked at the circle for a long time.
Nobody had stayed until morning.
That had been my second rule.
I had not noticed that I was breaking it until I woke up inside it.
I put my hand flat on his back, between the shoulder blades.
He was warm.
He breathed in, and sighed, and did not wake.
I slid my hand down the long muscles of his back and over the dip at the base of his spine.
I went on down over the curve of his ass.
He made a sound into the pillow.
"Mm," Nick said, with his eyes closed. "Dee?"
"Good morning."
"Is it morning?"
"It's seven," I said.
"That's not morning," he said. "That's the middle of the night."
"I want to wake you up."
"I'm awake," he said. "I'm up. I'm very awake."
I laughed, and he rolled over onto his side to face me, and I saw how awake he was.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of One Date, One Man, Never Twice: My Rule After the Divorce are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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