My Father Gave Me a New Big Brother, and the Only Man I Could Run To Was the One Who Put Him There novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Ball
The Sheepherders' Ball fills the Basque Center from wall to wall.
By eight o'clock four hundred people sat at long tables under strings of red and green lights.
The dancers had made the floor ring through two jotas.
I stood in the wings behind the stage curtain in my green dress, with my mother's hoops in my ears.
Mateo's hand was at the small of my back.
I could see the hall through a gap in the velvet.
My father sat in the front row, in his black suit, with his hands on his knees.
Beside him sat Mateo's mother.
On her other side sat a very small woman in a black cardigan with a rosary in her fingers.
Dario Ibarra's mother had come.
Behind them, at the end of the third table, in his good grey suit, sat Gorka.
He was talking to a man beside him and laughing.
By the double doors in the back stood two uniformed officers I had known since they were rookies.
Their hands were folded over their belts.
Four old men from the Block stood next to them in their ranch coats, with their arms folded the same way.
At the very back, against the wall, alone, stood Aitor.
"Tell me what you want," Mateo said in my ear.
"Stand where I can see you."
"Here?"
He pressed his lips together.
"Right at the edge of the curtain. Don't leave."
"I won't."
His hand stayed on my back a moment longer.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Father Gave Me a New Big Brother, and the Only Man I Could Run To Was the One Who Put Him There are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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