The Love We Missed novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Sunday Lunch

I went up the iron stairs in the alley two at a time.

His door was propped open with a cardboard box.

Ciaran was on his knees in the middle of the little room, rolling his knives into their canvas.

There were four boxes taped shut by the bed.

The bed I'd woken up in on Halloween.

He looked up and saw me and sat back on his heels.

"Carrot," he said.

"Carrot." I stayed in the doorway. "You're leaving."

"I'm getting out of your way."

"You don't get to decide that for me. You already decided one thing for me, thirteen years ago."

He winced.

He tied off the knife roll and set it on the box very carefully, the way he'd put down the knife at two a.m.

"I'm not here to forgive you," I said.

"I know."

"I don't know if I ever will. I sat in your mother's kitchen this morning and listened to her say I should thank her."

His head came up.

"She said that?"

"In front of her bridge club. She offered me a hundred and fifty thousand to take Nellie and leave the state." I folded my arms. "I tore it up and put it in the mints."

Something crossed his face and went away again.

"You should've cashed it first," he said.

"Don't make me laugh. I'm furious with you."

"I know."

"Stop saying you know." I looked at the boxes. "You could have told me any time. At the wedding. After. On Halloween, before I came up those stairs."

"I could have."

"Why didn't you?"

He looked at the window and the wet roofs.

"Because you'd look at me the way you're looking at me now," he said. "And I'd wanted you to look at me the other way for thirteen years."

My throat went tight.

I didn't let it show.

"Go to Chicago, then," I said. "If that's what you're doing."

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