To My Romeo, with Love novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Bald

He dried his hands on the dish towel.

He folded it and hung it on the oven handle, and that took him a very long time.

Then he crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me.

"Laurel," he said. "I know what I'm going to see."

"Then you know."

"I want to see it anyway."

I took his hand and led him up the stairs.

My room was the same as it had been at sixteen, with the yellow walls and the narrow bed.

The window was open an inch.

Outside, the last roses on the trellis shook in the dark.

I stood by the bed with my back to him.

I took off my T-shirt.

Underneath I was wearing nothing but gray cotton underwear, and I was thinner than I had ever been.

My ribs showed.

My scalp was bare and smooth and pale in the lamplight.

A hard knot sat below my left collarbone, with a puckered pink line above it where the surgeon had cut.

I stood there and waited to hear what he would say.

He didn't say anything.

He came up behind me and put his mouth against the back of my neck, very gently, where my hair used to fall.

I shivered all the way down.

"You're so beautiful," he said into my skin. "God, Laurel. Look at you."

"I don't look like."

"Shh."

His hands came around me, flat on my stomach.

He turned me to face him and kissed the port, a tender press of his lips on the scar, once.

He kissed the line of my collarbone.

He kissed the top of my bare head, and I made a sound.

"I'm not glass," I said. "Don't treat me like I'm glass."

"Okay."

"I want you to take me. Like you did."

His eyes went dark and heavy.

"I've been dreaming about that for five weeks," he said.

He pulled his flannel and his shirt off over his head.

I put my palms on his chest, on the wide soft hair there, and pushed him back until his knees hit the bed.

Keep reading free with an account. Start To My Romeo, with Love from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.