They Let Me Bleed Out for My Sister's Show novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: The Order

Rafe was still in the corridor at dawn, asleep sitting up with his back against the wall and his boots stretched out.

I stepped over his legs to get coffee and he caught my ankle without opening his eyes.

"She all right?" he said.

"She's sleeping. She wants to go public on Moonrise Eve."

He opened his eyes.

"Both of you?"

"Both of us."

He rubbed his face with one hand.

"Good," he said, and then, lower, "I figured you'd go back."

I stopped.

"When?"

"Last night, when she was sick. I sat out here and thought, She'll hear her sister cry, and she'll drive home and put her arm out. She's been doing it half her life."

"You thought that."

"I've thought it since the day I met you." He did not look away. "Every time you looked at the gate, I thought it. I wasn't sure what I was more afraid of, that you'd go, or that I'd have to let you."

I crouched in front of him.

"Rafe. She cried all night. I held her. And I'm here."

"I know."

"No. You're hearing it. You don't know it yet."

I stood up and held out a hand.

He took it, and I pulled him to his feet.

"My place or yours?" I said.

"Yours is a dorm."

"Then yours."

His apartment smelled of yesterday's bread from the bakery downstairs.

The door had barely shut when I shoved him against it, and he made a rough sound and kissed me hard.

"Ivy..."

"Don't. You just thought I'd leave. So watch me not."

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