My Alpha Wanted a Graceful Rejection, So I Rehearsed Dating His Rival novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Stove Comes Home
Nils delivered the sauna stove on Tuesday, in a pickup, with a bow on it the size of a tire.
"It's a wedding present," he said.
"It's the same bow," I said.
"I kept the bow."
He stood in Hilkka's yard in an ironed flannel shirt, which I took to be a good sign.
Behind him the stove sat in the truck bed with its three hundred pounds of cast iron and its green ribbon.
I had last seen it in a lodge vestibule with a door taken off for it.
"You're giving me back a gift I returned," I said.
"I'm giving you a stove for a sauna that has no stove," said Nils.
I looked at the sauna up the hill behind the cottage, with its empty square of bricks.
"That's an actual use," I said.
"I checked."
"With whom?"
"Your grandmother," Nils said. "She said, 'Don't bring the bow.' I brought the bow."
Soren came around the woodshed with a pair of work gloves on.
He and Nils looked at each other across the truck bed.
Neither of them seemed to know where to put his hands.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of My Alpha Wanted a Graceful Rejection, So I Rehearsed Dating His Rival are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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