I Let Her Ruin Herself novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: What I Never Said

Ruby's POV

I told him in my kitchen, at the table where Dale had put down the tablet, with the porch light on and my mother upstairs pretending to sleep.

I started with the knee, because it was the easiest.

Then the cane, and the doctor who said no children, and the interview, and the contracts.

I told him about the thirty years and the garage.

I told him the last part last.

"The man had a hood," I said. "I never saw his face. I saw his hand on my collar. Left hand. A pale scar across all four knuckles."

Wyatt didn't move.

"I saw it the morning in your bed," I said. "That's why I went white. That's why I asked you not to answer her."

He stared at me.

His face had gone very pale.

He pushed his chair back from the table, walked to the sink, and put both hands on the edge of it.

He stayed there a long time, with his head down.

I let him.

The refrigerator hummed.

The clock over the stove said a quarter to one.

"It was me," he said finally, to the window.

"It was a man she'd found."

"It was me."

"Wyatt."

"You sat across a table from me for weeks, and I never knew what you were seeing." He stopped and started again. "You let me touch you, knowing that."

"I thought about it every time."

"And you let me."

"I made myself look at your hand. Every single day." My voice shook. "I put it on my ribs because I wanted it to be yours and nobody else's. I wanted to change what it meant."

He turned around.

His eyes were red.

"That's what you were doing the night of the photograph," he said.

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