The Home She Built With Someone Else novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Names on the Plans

Nathan's POV

She stood in the middle of my living room in her coat, and I closed the door and did not touch her.

"Tell me what you saw," I said.

"Twenty-three drawings."

"Twenty-six. I did three after you left the stairwell."

Her mouth moved.

"Every one of them was me," she said. "Not a wife. Not the director. Not a woman with a ring. Me, at a table, with a pencil in my teeth."

"That's how you work."

"You noticed."

"I notice everything you do. It's become a problem."

She unbuttoned her coat, slowly, and held it in both hands.

"I thought you saw Nigel's wife," she said. "I thought that every time you looked at me you saw the woman who walked you into that room, and that anything good you felt was something you were doing to be kind."

"And I thought I was a rebound."

"A what?"

"A good pair of hands. Someone useful, in the right place, while you got through a bad year."

"Nathan," she said. "I hired you for the plan. I kept you because you made the stairs come out in the light. I'd have kept you if every plan had gone wrong."

I took a breath.

"I need two things," I said.

"Tell me."

"My name goes on everything I draw. You gave me that at the interview. I need it to stay true when you're not the director, and when it costs somebody something."

"It will."

"And you stop arranging the room."

She went still.

"The table, the chair, who walks in first so you can watch his face. I'd rather you ask me. Even if it's a worse plan. Even if I say no."

She was quiet for a long time.

"I managed you," she said. "From the first email."

"Yes."

"I did it because I'm frightened of not being the one holding the pencil."

"I know. Hold it next to me."

She put the coat on the chair.

"All right," she said. "I'll ask. I'll ask you everything."

"Then ask me something."

"Do you want me to stay?"

"Yes."

"With the lights on?"

I looked at her.

I had thought that night on the couch, with the pins on the floor, that she'd never choose me with the lights on.

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