Off Limit: Claimed by My Ex-Fiancé's Stepdad novel · Chapter 26 of 32

Chapter 26: Bank Street

I looked at our hands on top of the empty urn.

"Terms," I said.

His mouth twitched. "I'd be worried if there weren't any."

"The loan stays. A thousand every Friday, on the table, until it's paid."

"Agreed."

"No more dollar a night."

"Agreed."

"And I pick the room."

He looked at me.

"Jude's mother picked every room in that house," I said. "I'm not sleeping in hers. I'm picking one that's mine."

"Pick any one you want," he said. "Pick the kitchen. I'll learn to sleep on the table."

"Then yes."

He closed his eyes for a second.

Across the cabin, Joanie opened one eye on her wife's shoulder.

"Did she just say yes to something?" she said. "Because I've got a square on that."

"Go back to sleep, Joanie."

"I'm going to collect when I wake up."

On Monday, the theater was dark, and I moved in.

It took one cab.

Seven garbage bags had become four boxes and two suitcases somewhere around the second week of previews.

Ward stood on the stoop with his sleeves rolled up and waited for me to tell him which room.

"Top floor," I said.

He stared at me. "You said not the top floor."

"You said not the top floor. You said not a guest. I'm not a guest." I handed him a box. "I picked that room on March first, in a wedding dress. It's mine. I'm keeping it."

"It has a single radiator and a slanted ceiling."

"So you'll duck."

He started laughing on the stoop, and a woman walking a dog looked at him.

Two of the deck crew came down from 46th Street on their day off and carried his bed up a flight of stairs.

It was a big bed with a dark wood headboard.

It went up the last turn of the stairs with an inch to spare and a lot of swearing.

My white bed went down to the third floor.

"The guest room," Ward said, looking at it.

"For when Joanie's wife kicks her out."

"She never would."

"For when the cat does, then."

At eleven that night the house was quiet.

The boxes were stacked against the wall under the window. The radiator knocked.

Ward ducked under the slanted ceiling to sit on the edge of the bed, and hit his head anyway, and swore.

I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the floor.

I sat on the floor with my back against the bed frame, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand.

Ward sat across from me, legs stretched out, one knee bent, watching me with his head tipped a little to avoid the ceiling.

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