Chapter 13: The Front Door

"I was going to tell you tonight," Damiano said.

He didn't come into the room.

He stayed in the doorway with the phone hanging from his hand.

"Don't say tonight like it's a present," I said.

"It isn't."

I held the invoice up, and my hand shook so hard that the paper rattled.

"Then say it plainly. I want to hear you say it."

"It was my car," he said. "The invoice is true."

"Go on."

"All of it is true. What it doesn't say is that I could have told you any night for three weeks."

"And then you sat in a chair for twenty-one nights."

"Yes."

"And never walked down the hall."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because every night I told myself I would the next night," he said. "You were asleep, and then you were awake, and then you were smiling at him."

The fly bumped against the window again.

I stood up with one hand on the desk.

My leg held.

It had held for a week now, and I would not let it fail me in front of him.

"Did you know in the stairwell?" I said.

"Yes."

"When you stopped."

"That's why I stopped."

I remembered his mouth on mine and his hands going slack and the words he had used to push me back.

Wait until you want me and don't need me.

I had thought it was the most careful thing a man had ever said to me.

"Did you know in your bed?"

"Yes."

"Did you know in the kitchen?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Made Me Run On a Broken Leg. Don Had My Back from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.