Chapter 17: Fourteen Months

I crossed the office and knelt in front of her.

"Iris, listen to me."

"I am listening."

"I did it to keep you safe. You've never been out there. You don't know what it's like."

"That's because you never let me find out."

"I love you."

"I know you do." Her voice shook for the first time. "That's the worst part."

I reached for her wrist.

She looked down at my hand.

"Stop," she said.

I let go at once.

She watched me do it, and this time nothing in her face was curious.

"You always stop when I say it," she said. "Do you know what I figured out this week?"

"Tell me."

"You only stop when it's something you've already won."

I sat back on my heels.

She drew her knees up under the flannel shirt and wrapped her arms around them.

"When I was twenty I asked you to take me to town," she said. "For Mama's grave. Do you remember what you said?"

"Iris."

"Do you remember?"

"I said not yet."

"You said it so softly. You put your hand on my hair."

She almost smiled.

"I thought, he's being kind. I waited a month and asked again, and you said it in the same voice."

"I was going to take you."

"No, you weren't."

She said it flatly, without any heat.

"I knew what not yet meant after that. It meant never. So I stopped asking, and I decided it was love, because the other word was cage."

My throat closed.

"I didn't call it that."

"I know. You called it protecting me."

She looked at the safe.

"I called it home, because I needed somewhere to live."

"That's not what it was."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Calls It Love, She Sees It as Home from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.