Chapter 12: The Offer

Monday at six, I flipped the sign to Closed and turned the deadbolt, and Gabe's hands closed around my waist from behind.

He had come in the back door with the brass key.

I hadn't heard it turn.

"Item two," I said. "Daylight."

"It's dark."

"It's six o'clock. That's close enough."

"I walked in through the front," he lied, against my ear.

"You used the back."

"You gave me permission."

"I did not."

"Your mother did. In a card."

I turned around in his arms and found his mouth.

Neither of us had said much since my father left on Sunday, leaning on Bernie's arm, with a very straight face.

He had stood in my kitchen for ten minutes and looked at the two coffee cups.

He said only, "Good. Now somebody tell me where the stapler is."

Bernie had not stopped smiling all day.

The store was empty now, lit only by the one green exit sign and the streetlight through the front glass.

The aisles stood long and shadowed on either side of us.

I backed him toward the stockroom door.

"Where are we going?" he murmured.

"Where nobody can see from the street."

"There's a window."

"There's no window in the stockroom."

"Then I'm very interested in the stockroom."

I pulled him through the door and shut it behind us.

It was small, a closet of shelves floor to ceiling.

It was stocked with boxes of nails and bags of washers and a ladder folded on its side.

The only light came from a bare bulb on a string.

I yanked the string off.

In the dark, I heard him breathe.

"Susie."

"Say what you want."

"I want you against that shelf."

My knees nearly gave way.

"Then do it," I said.

He lifted me by the backs of my thighs and set me against the steel upright, a box of anchor bolts rattling by my head.

His mouth was on my throat, and his hands were under my sweater, fast.

I fumbled with his belt.

My fingers shook so much that he finally laughed and helped.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Ex-Husband's New Wife Asked Me to Take Him Back from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.