My Chongxi Husband Is Faking His Coma novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Night Before

The night before the banquet, Lin Zhi did not cross the corridor.

He lay in the narrow bed in his own room, with the speech folded in his hand, and read it to the ceiling.

It was four lines long.

He had written it twelve times and cut it twelve times, and every version still began with I.

"I am not afraid of the handcuffs," he told the rafters.

"I am afraid of the part where I stand there with my mouth open."

The floorboards in the corridor spoke.

It was one board, then another, slow and uneven, with a pause between that was not a creak but a decision.

Lin Zhi sat up.

The door opened without a knock.

Xie Zhaoran stood in it in a grey sleeping robe, with one hand on the frame and no cane.

He was breathing hard, and his face was white with effort, and he was smiling.

"You walked here," said Lin Zhi.

"It's the length of the hall." Zhaoran leaned on the jamb. "You've crossed it for nine nights. I thought it was my turn."

"You could have fallen."

"I fell twice in the middle. The old lady's cat watched. It was not impressed."

Lin Zhi laughed, with a crack in it, and then he stopped, because Zhaoran had come into the room and shut the door.

He did it with his back, slowly, as a man does who wants to be sure of his own feet.

He stood a pace from the bed.

The lamp showed everything it could of him.

He had filled out in nine days, in the shoulders and along the forearms.

The pale scar through the eyebrow stood out against a face that had stopped being grey.

"Tell me about the speech," he said.

"It begins with I."

"Most good ones do."

"Zhaoran." Lin Zhi's voice went small. "If they take me tomorrow, before you stand."

"They will not take you past the door."

"If they do."

"Then they will have to carry me out of that chair to do it," said Zhaoran. "Lin Zhi. Look at me."

Lin Zhi looked.

"I have a list of forty-one things you said you wanted," said Zhaoran. "I cannot pay a single line from a seat in the gallery. So you will not be taken."

"That's not a plan."

"It is the only part of the plan that is mine."

He crossed the last pace, and sat down on the bed, and took Lin Zhi's face in both his hands.

His palms were rough from the rail he had hauled himself along for nine days.

"I am going to have you tonight," he said. "Properly. As I could not the first time."

Lin Zhi swallowed.

"You mean from on top," said Lin Zhi.

"I mean the way you want."

"You haven't had the strength yet," said Lin Zhi.

"I have it now," said Zhaoran. "I have thought about very little else for a week."

Lin Zhi's whole face went hot.

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