After Rebirth The Scums All Cry For Forgiveness novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Window

Rowan stopped in the doorway of the back room, leaning hard on a black cane.

His shirt was buttoned wrong again.

There was gravel on his palms, and one trouser knee was torn.

"You fell," I said.

"At the gate. Twice."

"You walked across the road on legs that are nine nights old."

"I could not think of another way to get here."

He looked at the bolt on the outside of the door, and at the thin mattress, and at the window the size of a book.

His face changed.

"This is where they kept you," he said.

"Tobias brought my plate here when he could," I said. "He was the only one who did."

I looked at the mattress.

I had meant to say nothing, and I was tired of saying nothing.

"Rowan, I'm going to tell you something. You can call me mad."

"Tell me."

"I died in this room."

He did not move.

"Two years from now. They ruined my hands, and then Delphine poisoned me, and Leland held my head while I drank it."

The wind pushed the door against his shoulder, and he did not notice.

"You came in a black suit, too late. You carried me out. Then I woke on my grandfather's step, alive, on the day Leland came to fetch me."

"That is why you knew what the pot would do," he said slowly.

"Yes."

"And why you looked at Leland like that, in the hospital."

"Yes."

"Why did you not tell me before?"

"Who would believe it? And because for three months in that life you sat at your second-floor window and watched my family's house," I said. "You watched me through the glass. You never once crossed the street."

My voice broke on the last word.

"I wanted to hate you for it. I have wanted to since the first day."

He was silent for a long moment.

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