Seducing My Dad's Best Friend novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Ring

He asked me on the dock on a Thursday, at six in the evening, with the whole crew pretending to be somewhere else.

I had walked out to the end after closing the desk, because the light on the water was pink and because it was where I always went.

The wooden steps up from the lower float were behind me.

They were the steps he had carried me up four years ago with my knee bleeding onto his shirt.

I heard his boots on the planks.

"Vic."

"I'm looking at the lake."

"I know. I'd like you to look at me for a minute."

I turned.

He was standing three feet away in his gray work jacket, with sawdust on his sleeve and his hair wet from the yard hose.

His right hand was in his pocket.

It was shaking.

I did not say a word about it.

"I had a speech," he said.

"Did you."

"It was good. I wrote it on the back of a charter slip." He pulled the slip out and unfolded it and looked at it. "I can't read my own writing."

"Give it here."

"No."

"Gabe."

"I'll do it without." He folded the slip and put it away. "Vicky Pawlak. When you were twenty-two, I carried you up those steps and I knew."

"You knew what?"

"I knew I was in trouble." He gave a short laugh. "I thought it would pass. I told myself it was the knee and the adrenaline. I was thirty-eight and you were my best friend's kid, and I'd have said I had better sense."

"You didn't."

"I have never had less sense in my life. I've carried it for four years, and I've carried the other thing for fourteen."

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