The Abandoned Wife novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Single

"Good," Emil said again.

I stared at him.

"You're supposed to argue."

"With which part?"

He leaned on the porch post, bare-chested in the cold.

"You said you're staying."

"I did."

"I'd have driven home alone and been very stupid about it. So that's the part I care about."

"And the other part?"

"I wasn't going to ask you to marry me."

My mouth opened.

"I was thinking about a ring for roughly three weeks," Emil said.

"I priced a few."

"Then I thought about my mother's face when I told her, and I thought about yours."

"What was mine?"

"Like someone being handed a bill."

I laughed, and then I had to hold the rail.

The laugh turned into something else for a moment, and he waited it out.

"I took his name once," I said when I could.

"I signed it on every check for three years."

"I know."

"Everything I've done since is on a door that says Salter, because I put it there."

"I want to keep it a while without anyone's hand on the glass."

"Even mine."

"Even yours. Mostly yours."

I turned the sapphire on my right hand.

"That's the part that scares me. You're so easy to lean on."

"Then lean."

"Not as a wife."

"Then as whatever you are," Emil said.

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