Chapter 17: Come Home

Leona's POV

I stood on the sidewalk outside the clinic at midnight with the overnight bag on my shoulder.

I had walked across the city to get here, and I had spent the whole walk not deciding what to say.

Through the glass door I could see the forty mugs, and a boy asleep on two chairs.

I thought, as clearly as I could, I'm outside.

Then I felt ridiculous, and I said it out loud to the door.

"I'm outside."

The door opened.

Ansel stood in it with his sleeves rolled and his hands still damp.

He looked as though he had not slept since I left.

"I heard you," he said.

"I know. I said it twice."

"I heard it both times. The second one was in your actual voice."

"I'm practicing."

He stepped out onto the pavement and let the door close behind him.

"Leona."

"I'm not here to forgive you," I said. "That's later. I'm here to ask for something."

"Ask."

"I asked you to stay at the cake. I asked you once."

"You did."

"I asked you again in the kitchen, and you stayed."

"I did."

"But I never asked you for the thing I actually wanted."

My voice shook, and I let it.

"Come home," I said.

He didn't move.

"Not when the clinic's quiet. Not when Barrett's asleep. Come home with me, now, and let someone else sit with the boy."

"That's all of it?"

"That's the whole ask."

"You told me on the terrace," Ansel said, very carefully, "that you'd never expect me to stay."

"I did."

"You thought it again at the dinner. You thought it in the shower."

"Well, I'm expecting it now," I said. "Out loud. In public. In front of a man selling hot dogs."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Can Hear Every Unspoken Thought Of Mine from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.