I Was His Wife, She Was His Everything novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: Upstairs

Nobody in the bar said a word as we went.

I walked him through the kitchen, past the scorched wall, and out the back door to the outside stairs.

He left black footprints on every step.

At the top I stopped with my hand on the doorknob.

"Rue," he said behind me. "You're cold. You're tired. You just spent five hours in a boat."

"I know."

"I don't want you deciding this because of a day like today."

I turned around.

He was two steps below me, so for once we were eye to eye.

"In Nassau a storm put us in a room," I said. "Tonight nothing put you here. I'm asking."

He didn't move.

"Ask me plain, then," he said quietly.

"Stay," I said. "I want you. Tonight. Here, in my room, in my bed."

His breath went out of him.

"Yes," he said.

I opened the door.

I turned the deadbolt and stood there dripping on the mat.

My room was the size of a walk-in closet with a slanted ceiling, and Lawton filled every inch of it.

He ducked under the doorframe, then again under the ceiling, and straightened as much as he could.

"Your palace," he said.

"My palace."

I pulled my wet Sallie's shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor.

He watched me.

"Shower," I said. "You first. You're tracking mud on my floor."

He looked down at the black streaks on the linoleum.

"Say it again."

"What?"

"The way you did on the stairs. Like you're the one giving orders."

I stepped out of my shorts and stood in my bra and underwear, shivering.

"Get in the shower, Lawton."

He pulled his ruined shirt off over his head with one hand.

And I saw it.

The burn.

His left forearm was a raw red stripe from wrist to elbow, blistered at the edges, black with mud.

I grabbed his good wrist before he could hide it.

"Sit," I said.

He sat on the edge of my narrow bed, on the patchwork quilt, and left a black smear there.

I got the first-aid kit from under the sink and knelt in front of him on the linoleum.

"Hold still."

The gauze was white and clean and I wrapped it tight around his forearm, from the wrist up to the crease of his elbow.

He watched my hands the whole time.

"That's the first time all day you've touched me on purpose," he said.

"Tilt your head."

I washed the mud off his face with a wet cloth, careful around his eyes.

The cloth came away black.

"Now you look like my husband."

"Behind," he said quietly, the way he said it at my shoulder behind the bar.

"Not now."

I stood up and peeled my bra off and dropped my underwear on top of the pile.

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