Chapter 8: Before Five

Ansel's POV

I woke at 4:20 with my feet off the end of her couch and my neck bent wrong.

For a moment I didn't know where I was.

Then I smelled the shampoo on the pillow, and I did.

Her bedroom door was open a hand's width.

She lay on her side with one arm hanging off the mattress, asleep.

I stood in the doorway longer than a man with rules should.

I had a rule for that, too. Be gone before five.

I had made it in her workroom with my pulse still going.

I'd known when I said it that it was for me, not for her.

If I stayed past dawn, I would see her face in the morning light.

Then I would have to decide what I thought of it.

I pulled on my shoes in the kitchen.

On the way out I stopped at her fridge.

It was covered in sticky notes in a small neat hand.

Order peonies. Call the wedding client back. Eat something.

I peeled off the last one, folded it and put it in my pocket.

Nobody had written me a note in two years.

Out on the sidewalk the air was cold and the street was gray.

I sat on the curb in front of her shop and took out my phone.

The voicemail from Rosalind was the only one I had never deleted.

I'd played it so many times that I knew where her breath caught.

Ansel, it's me. I'm coming home.

We need to talk, and I need you not to be angry. Okay?

I love you. I'll be there in twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes was how long it took to drive from Hale Street to our house.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Billionaire's Fight For Redemption from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.