I Blessed Her Wedding With My Life novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: First Night

The silver sedan's window slid down.

"Tilda, honey," my mother called across the dark, in her warmest voice. "Get in the car. You've had a long week."

Tilda looked at me.

I looked at her.

"You don't have to," I said.

"If I don't, she'll know what I said," Tilda whispered. "If I do, she'll think I came to apologize."

She walked up the gravel path with her bandaged hand held against her chest.

At the top she turned, and her lips made two words in the dim light.

The gala.

Then she climbed into the car, and my mother drove her away without once looking at me.

Anson drove me back to the lake house in a silence that had edges.

I sat in the passenger seat with my cut palm in my lap, and I did not cry.

I was past that.

In his kitchen, under the yellow lamp, I told him what Tilda had seen, start to finish.

He did not interrupt once, and his jaw worked the whole time.

"I'm so sorry, Jo."

"Don't be sorry. Don't be kind." My voice shook. "I've had three years of kind."

I crossed the kitchen and stood in front of him.

He was a foot away, with his hands at his sides, not touching me, exactly as I had told him to.

"You told me not to touch you unless I said so," he said, very low.

"I'm saying."

His breath went out of him.

"Jo."

"Is this pity?" I asked. I had to. "Because if it's pity, I'll know. I'll feel it in your hands."

"Pity," Anson said, and something almost like a laugh caught in his throat. "I wrote you thirty-six letters. I've thought about your mouth every night since a dock."

"Then stop thinking."

I took his shirt in both fists and kissed him.

The kiss was nothing like the dock.

It was hungry and clumsy, with my teeth against his lip and my stitched hand pressed flat on his chest, and he made a rough sound and kissed me back.

I walked him backward down the hall.

In my room I shut the door, and I turned the lock myself, and the click went through me.

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