The Billionaire Janitor Is Back! novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Sofa

On the fourth night, I woke at three in the morning and heard someone breathing in my kitchen.

I lay still for a second, and then I remembered I had a husband.

I put on my glasses and went out in my sleep shirt and bare feet.

Mal was at the table in the dark, with one lamp on and my broken desk clock in pieces in front of him.

He had a jeweler's screwdriver in his big hand, the burned one, and he was working it very gently under the face.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't want to wake you."

"It's three a.m."

"I don't sleep much on sofas."

"You don't sleep much anywhere."

He glanced up.

"I notice things too," I said. "We never did the true thing tonight."

He set the screwdriver down.

"Yours or mine?"

"You first."

He looked at the clock parts.

"I haven't slept in a real bed since my mother died," he said. "Three years in March. I keep trying, and I end up on the floor."

Something heavy turned over in my chest.

"I'm sorry."

"Your turn."

I sat across from him and pulled my knees up under the shirt.

"For the first year of my marriage, I was happy," I said. "Truly. I never tell anyone that, because it makes me look stupid. He was kind then. I think I still miss the man I thought he was."

"That isn't stupid."

"It feels like it."

"It's just true."

The lamp threw his shadow across the table and onto my hands.

He reached across and did not take my hand.

He put his palm flat on the wood beside it, close enough that I felt the warmth.

I looked at the scar.

Under the lamp it was the color of a seashell, smooth and ridged, and it ran from his knuckles to the bone of his wrist.

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