He Rejected Me Out Loud and Kept Other Women, So I Never Answered novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Winter on the Reach
Rhiannon's POV
By February the ferry's winter run was mine.
The captain had asked, in January, if I would take the stern full-time at a lead hand's wage, and I had said yes before he finished.
It was written in the ledger in my own hand, and nobody's thumb was on it.
I woke at half past four every morning in the house on the harbor road.
It was not his house anymore, or not only.
I had hung my jacket on the third peg by the door.
I had put my mother's lamp on the long table.
I had bought a rag rug for the kitchen with my own wage.
The stove was lit by five.
He lit it.
He did it every morning, in his socks, in the dark, and he did not say a word about it.
On the first Monday of the month I came down the stairs in my work boots and found him at the table with a mug in each hand.
"Yes or no," he said.
"To what?"
"Coffee. I've no right to put it in your hand without asking."
I took it out of his fingers.
"Yes," I said.
"Is that ever going to stop being a joke?"
"No."
He smiled.
He did it more now.
It was not the big grin of a man who has never had trouble.
It came slowly, with the corner of his mouth, and it went all the way to his eyes.
"I've news," he said.
"Go on," I said.
"The Gaff's bartender has been telling the whole island that the Alpha takes his orders from a deckhand."
"That's not news," I said.
"She's put it on a sign."
I stared at him. "She's what?"
"Come and see," he said.
We walked down to the Gaff in the first gray light with our mugs.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of He Rejected Me Out Loud and Kept Other Women, So I Never Answered are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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