His Affection Meter Hit 100% novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Ring

Heath's POV

I found the first gray hair in the bathroom mirror at seven thirty, over my left ear.

Then I found a second one.

I am twenty-seven years old, and I stood there plucking them out with tweezers and telling myself it was stress.

There had been a lot of stress.

I also had a nosebleed in my sleep, apparently, because there was blood on the pillow, and Ainsley had asked "Since when?" and then not said a word more about it.

She had looked at it, and then at me, and then at the wall.

That was the part I could not stop turning over.

She had changed in the last week, and I had no idea why.

The old Ainsley asked where I was every hour.

She checked my phone while I was in the shower and pretended she hadn't.

She hated Frankie so hard it made her hands shake.

This Ainsley smiled at me and looked at my face for too long.

She forgave everything before I'd finished saying sorry, and I was stupid enough to feel relieved before I felt ashamed.

I had kissed my best friend in a back room while my girlfriend was downstairs.

There wasn't any good reason.

I'd been drunk, and I'd been scared of Ainsley, and Frankie was the only person in my life who had ever told me no.

That wasn't an excuse, and I knew it.

I knew something else, too.

I missed being asked.

I missed Ainsley asking me where I'd been, because it meant she cared enough to be afraid.

Now she was calm, and every kind thing she did made me love her more and trust it less.

At the office I took the box out of my desk drawer and opened it.

It was my grandmother's ring, an old gold band with a small green stone.

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