Fired From His Shed, I Married His Brother and Became His Landlord novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Read It to Me
"Yes," Jesse said. "I'm Lenora Hale."
He said it with the door open behind him and the sun on his back.
I still had his shirt in my fist and the crumpled page between us.
"Shut the door," I said.
He pushed it closed with his boot and turned the bolt.
"I'll tell you all of it, Susie. I swear I will."
"Not yet," I said.
I let go of his shirt and went to the shelf.
I took down the sixth book, and it fell open in my hands at the page I had read until my own copy's spine cracked.
"Page two hundred and twelve," I said. "The verandah."
His mouth opened, and nothing came out.
"You know the page," I said.
"I know every page," he said.
"Then read it to me."
I sat down on the edge of the steel desk and pushed his laptop back with my hip.
I put the book in his hands.
"Read it in your own voice," I said. "And do what it says."
He stood between my knees with the paperback open against his palm.
His fingers were not steady.
I had never seen them unsteady, not on a tractor wheel, not on a grill, not on me.
He cleared his throat.
"She stood at the verandah rail with the lamp behind her," Jesse read.
"He could see through her nightgown every line he meant to learn by heart."
His voice was the voice from the dark, low and slow.
It was also the voice I had heard in my head in a hospital lounge.
I had not known they were one voice until that second.
"Go on," I said.
"He crossed the boards slowly, so she would hear him come."
He set the book on the desk beside my thigh, still open, and said the next line from memory.
"He said, I am going to put my hands on you," Jesse said.
"I am going to keep them there until you tell me the truth of what you want."
He knelt and unlaced my boots.
He drew them off, one and then the other, and set them side by side on the concrete.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Fired From His Shed, I Married His Brother and Became His Landlord are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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