Chapter 8: Rain

I didn't say anything for a long moment.

Eighteen years, I thought, and then the thought slid away from me.

I was looking at her face, and it was the face of someone waiting to be hit.

"You did what a good engineer does," I said.

"I put a sixty-eight-year-old man in a hangar."

"Grady and Lorna put him in a hangar."

"I handed them the shovel."

She picked up her bag from the table, and I realized she was leaving.

"Dinah."

"I shouldn't have kissed you." Her voice was thick. "You have enough to carry."

The door clicked shut behind her.

I went after her without my coat.

I took the stairs, ten floors, two at a time, and burst into the lobby as she pushed out through the glass doors.

It was raining, a hard freezing rain that coated the street in glass.

She was halfway to a dented pickup with her hood down.

"Dinah!"

She stopped and didn't turn around.

I crossed the pavement, and the rain soaked through my sweater at once.

"You didn't start it," I said. "A man who gives things away in secret for eighteen years is always going to get found out."

"That's not comfort."

"It's not meant to be. It's true."

She turned, and water ran off her chin.

"I'm not going to tell you to go," I said. "I want you to stay."

"Stay and do what?"

"Whatever you were thinking about on that balcony."

Her lips parted.

She grabbed the front of my wet sweater and dragged my mouth down to hers.

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