From Secret Desire for My Stepbrother to Reality novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: Mutual

I took my phone out on the stage.

The screen was green.

It's mutual, it said. Jem Muir listed you too.

Under it, smaller: Listed December 4th. Delivered December 8th.

Three years and four days late.

Under that was his note.

I already knew every word of it.

Six million people knew every word of it.

I read it anyway, standing next to a brass lever in front of fifteen hundred people.

Then I looked up.

Jem was already in the aisle.

He wasn't running.

He was walking down toward the stage the way he'd walked down that garage ramp, fast and steady, with his phone in his hand.

I went down the steps at the side.

We met in the aisle at row one, right in front of the woman from Tacoma.

The whole room was buzzing and crying and nobody was looking at us.

Then somebody was.

Then everybody was.

Jem held up his phone.

His screen was green too.

And under my name, there was a note.

I'd forgotten I wrote one.

No, that wasn't true.

I'd spent three years making myself forget I wrote one.

"Don't," I said, and reached for it.

He lifted it out of my reach without even trying.

He read it.

I watched his eyes go down the screen, and back up, and down again.

"Read it to me," he said.

"No."

"Lindy. I read you mine."

"You read it to me in a closed shop. This is a livestream."

"Then say it quietly."

I took the phone out of his hand.

I didn't need to look at it.

I'd typed it at eleven thirty-one at night, alone at my kitchen table, sitting in the chair he'd fixed.

"You fixed my kitchen chair without asking," I said, very low, just to him. "I haven't sat in it since without thinking about your hands. I know what Mom would say. Stay for breakfast next time."

He didn't say anything for a second.

"You never asked me to breakfast," he said.

"I'm asking."

"Three years late."

"The app was slow."

He laughed, a short, broken sound.

Then he put his hand on my jaw and kissed me in the aisle at Pier 66.

Not slow, this time.

Not careful.

Somebody in row one whooped.

It was the woman from Tacoma.

In row three, my mother said, very clearly, "Out loud!"

And the gray shirts picked it up, the same way they'd picked up "flip it," row after row.

We left by the side door with the room still going.

Kath was waiting on level two, sitting on the hood of my car with her laptop.

She took one look at us and slid off.

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