He Dated Me for My Sister novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: First Snow

It started to snow in Chicago on the fifth of January, about an hour after the movers left.

I stood at the window of my new apartment and watched it fall past the streetlight.

Third floor, one bedroom, a radiator that clanked, and a view of a laundromat.

I had signed the lease with my own name on it, and nobody else's.

Behind me, Rhys stood on a stepladder with a curtain rod and a mouthful of screws.

"Left," I said. "A little more."

"This is more."

"Left."

He moved it an inch, and spat out the screws into his palm.

"Better?"

"Perfect."

He climbed down and kissed me on the temple on his way past.

I had told him on the seventeenth of November, in Taylor's kitchen at midnight, over a plate of cold noodles.

He had made me say it twice.

On Monday he started at a kitchen on Milwaukee Avenue, and his knives were already in a drawer in my apartment.

The buzzer rang at six.

I pressed the button and heard a heavy step on the stairs.

When I opened the door, my father stood in the hallway in his good coat.

He had snow on his shoulders and a thin white envelope in his gloved hand.

"Dad."

"Your mother wanted to come," he said. "I told her to give you a week."

"You drove four hours in this."

"It wasn't snowing when I left."

I let him in, and Rhys put down the screwdriver and shook his hand.

Dad looked around the room, at the boxes and the bare walls and the blue vase on the windowsill.

He nodded slowly.

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