He Chose My Sister, So I Left Him With Nothing novel · Chapter 19 of 32

Chapter 19: His House

We took the skiff across.

I drove. His hands couldn't hold the tiller long, and he didn't argue, which told me how much they still hurt.

He sat in the bow facing me with his T-shirt back on, damp from the deck.

He didn't say anything the whole way across.

He just looked at me.

It was the longest boat ride of my life.

His dock light was on. The gray house sat up the slope with the screened porch glowing yellow.

I tied off. My fingers fumbled the knot twice.

"Want me to do it?" he said.

"With those hands?"

"I'd figure it out."

"Sit there and be decorative."

He grinned and climbed out onto the dock, and held out his arm for me, and I took it even though I didn't need it.

We walked up the path through the dark, past his green truck, past the shop, past the two magazines in the hill.

My shells were in one of them. That felt like it meant something tonight.

The porch door creaked.

His kitchen was small and clean and smelled like coffee and cedar.

There was a fishing calendar on the fridge from four years ago, still on March.

I looked at it.

"I never turned it," he said. "I meant to."

"You don't have to."

"I know." He reached past me and took it off the nail. He set it face down on the counter. "There."

Then he turned around and I was right there, my back against his counter, and he was right there in front of me.

Neither of us moved.

"I'm going to ask once more," he said quietly. "Because I want to hear it in my kitchen, not on a barge."

"Ask."

"Do you want to stay?"

"Hayes."

"I mean it. You can say no. I'll drive you around the lake myself."

"You can't drive. Your hands."

"I'd figure it out."

I took his face in both my hands.

"I want to stay," I said. "I want you. Yes."

His shoulders dropped, his forehead coming down to rest against mine.

He kissed me first.

His mouth came down on mine before I could make another smart remark, and it wasn't careful.

It was hungry.

Like he'd been waiting through all eleven minutes of that boat ride and the walk up the hill and the stupid calendar, and now he was done being polite.

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