My Duplicated Husband novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Bruises

By nine that night I had checked every lock on the house twice.

Lorne followed me from door to door with a flashlight he'd found in the pantry.

He didn't ask why.

He just stood behind me while I turned each bolt.

At the top of the stairs I stopped.

My cardigan had been itching all day over the bruises, and I pulled it off in the bedroom without thinking.

I was in my camisole before I remembered he was standing in the doorway.

The sound he made was small.

I looked down at myself.

There was a black and yellow cloud along my left ribs where the dining table had caught me a week ago.

Four fingerprints ringed my upper arm.

Older marks climbed my shoulder in a faded purple chain.

I had stopped seeing them months ago.

He hadn't.

"Who," he said.

"Lorne."

"Who did this to you?"

"You did," I said. "Or I thought you did. For three years."

He sat down on the edge of the bed.

"No," he said. "No, Lyddie, no."

"I don't think it was you. I don't know what it was. But it wore your face."

He put his hands over his eyes, and his whole thin body shook.

"I'll go," he said through his fingers.

"If there's any chance I'm the thing that hurt you, I'll walk out that door tonight."

"You'll never have to see me again."

"Look at me."

"I can't."

I crossed the room and knelt between his knees.

I took his wrists, the raw ringed wrists, and pulled his hands down.

His eyes were red.

His lashes were wet.

I had waited three years for a man to look at me with that face and be sorry.

"Stay," I said.

"Lydia."

"I mean it. Stay."

I leaned up and kissed him.

He didn't move for a second.

His mouth was salt from crying, and shaking, and so careful it hurt.

Then a sound came out of his chest, and his hands came up into my hair, gentle at first and then not gentle at all.

He kissed me.

I climbed into his lap.

His arms locked around my waist, and he groaned against my mouth when I pressed down.

"Slow down," he whispered. "Lyddie, I haven't, I don't, it's been..."

"I know."

"I don't want to hurt you."

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