I Slept With My Fiancé's Hot Uncle novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Hired to Be My Friend

Brooke came to the bindery at closing time.

I was alone at my worktable with a cracked leather Bible and a pot of paste, my bandaged hand held awkwardly out of the way.

The bell over the door rang.

I knew the footsteps before I looked up.

"I told you five minutes," she said.

"I said I'd read it. I didn't say I'd see you."

She stood in the doorway in a gray coat, with her hair tied back and no makeup, and her eyes were swollen.

She looked like someone I had once loved.

"Please," she said. "Just let me say it."

I put down the brush.

"Say it, then."

"I'm so sorry."

"That's one."

"I never meant for it to start. It was a party, and you'd gone home sick, and he drove me home, and..." She pressed her fingers to her mouth. "I thought it would stop. Then it was a year, and I couldn't tell you."

"You could have."

"I didn't know how."

"You hugged me yesterday," I said. "You put my mascara on."

She flinched.

"Is that the part you can't forgive?"

"It's one of the parts."

She stepped in and put a brass key on my worktable.

It was small and flat, with a number stamped on the bow.

"That's the box," she said. "Russell's old papers. Nigel told you where."

"He did."

"He said I'd hand it over if he asked." Her laugh broke in the middle. "He's right. I would have. That's what I'm like."

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