You Are Not Rejecting Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: No Touching Till the Moon

I woke up in the guest bed with moss in my hair.

I did not remember walking back.

I remembered the headlights on the ridge road, and whose car they belonged to.

My sister had sat up there and watched us.

I did not know how to tell him that yet.

I remembered his coat around my shoulders, and his arm under my knees.

I remembered that he had set me down in the guest wing and kissed my forehead.

Then he had gone away down the hall without a word.

At the kitchen table at eight, Cadell sat with a glass of water and a bowl of dry cereal.

He looked terrible.

Idris stood at the stove, cracking eggs.

"Morning," Idris said, without turning around.

"Morning."

"Sleep well?"

"Fine."

"No touching till the moon, you said," he said, to the eggs.

I had a mouthful of coffee, and I almost choked on it.

Cadell looked up.

"What's that?"

"Nothing," we both said.

Cadell looked from me to his brother and back again.

"I heard something screaming in the woods at three in the morning," he said. "A big owl."

"Probably an owl," Idris said.

"Probably," I said.

Cadell put another handful of dry cereal in his mouth and chewed it with great suspicion.

I set my cup down.

"You said you couldn't stop," I told Idris, low enough that his brother could not hear.

He put the eggs on a plate and set it in front of me.

"I couldn't," he said.

"So the terms broke."

"They broke because you wouldn't let go of my face."

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