Nine Rejected Marriages, I Wed My Ex's Rival novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Tenth Chance
Claire got home from the museum at a quarter to eight and found a man on her stoop.
He was sitting on the cold stone with his coat buttoned to the chin and his hands pushed into his sleeves.
He stood up when he saw her, stiffly.
"How long?" she said.
"Since six."
"It's twenty degrees."
"I noticed about seven."
She looked at him, at the gray in his lips and the snow on his shoulders.
"You said you wouldn't ask again."
"I'm not asking. I'm sitting on your stairs."
She almost laughed, and caught it.
"I read it all," she said. "Forty pages. The loans, the lenders, the price."
"Did you want to ask me anything?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead."
The street was empty, and the light over the door buzzed.
She had thought about the question all day, in front of a canvas, with a brush in her hand.
"Who were you when you were fourteen?"
His face went still, and then it opened.
"A kid who carried flour sacks at four in the morning, because my mother's cousin paid cash," he said. "I was good at it. I learned what a bag weighed before I learned what a bank was."
"Did you like it?"
"I liked the hour before the ovens went on. The street was quiet and the bakery smelled of yeast and cold flour."
"What did you want?"
"To stop watching her count change."
"And now?"
"Now?" He looked at her hands. "Breakfast with you on a morning when nothing is happening."
Her eyes stung.
"I should have asked in April," she said. "I'm asking now. I'll keep asking."
"Claire."
"I don't want a year. I don't want rules or a spare room or a camera in the corner."
"The first nine times were somebody else's idea. This is the tenth, and it's mine. I'm choosing you, Weston, and nobody's making me."
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