My First Love Returned, His Stand-In Begged Me to Stay novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Six Letters

Kip admits he sent five of Monty's letters back, Selah sets thirty days with no one touching her, and Constance VanAlen's car is waiting outside.

I read the letter standing on the landing, under the buzzing light.

The paper was thin, and the ink had gone brown at the folds.

"Selah. They've taken my phone and I'm in Zurich. I did not send that text. Whatever you were told, it wasn't me. Wait for me. I'm coming home."

It was dated six years ago, in October.

It had taken six years to reach me.

I folded it along its old creases and handed it back.

"Keep that one," Monty said. "I want you to have it."

"I don't want it."

"Then read the others. They're at the Drake, room 1410. Take as long as you like."

I should have said no.

Instead I said, "Don't follow me," and went back through the door.

The party was over.

Half the guests were gone. The rest stood by the coat rack looking at their shoes.

Kip was at the kitchen counter with both hands flat on it.

He didn't look up.

"Selah," he said.

"Not here."

Bree already had my coat. She held it open for me, and we left.

Bree's apartment smelled like toast and lemon cleaner.

She sat me at her kitchen table and put a mug of tea in front of me that I didn't touch.

"Okay," she said. "I'll say the thing, and then I'll be quiet. Kip begged. In front of everyone. In six years I've never seen him ask for a second helping."

"I know."

"So he's either terrified, or he did something."

I turned the mug a quarter turn on the table.

"Monty said he wrote six letters."

"And?"

"And the envelope has Kip's handwriting on it."

Bree didn't say anything for a while.

Then someone knocked on her door, three soft knocks, and she looked at me and said, "That's him."

"I know."

"I can tell him to go away."

"Let him in," I said.

Kip stood in the doorway with snow in his hair and his work jacket on over his good shirt.

He didn't come any farther.

He looked at the envelope in my hand, and he knew what it was.

"Tell me it isn't what it looks like," I said.

"I can't."

His voice was very quiet.

"There were six," he said. "I sent five back."

I had expected a denial. I think I had needed one.

"Why?"

"Because he left you with one text and a hole in your life. I spent a year picking up the pieces. And then there was another letter in the box with a Zurich postmark."

He pushed his hand through his hair.

"I couldn't watch it happen to you twice."

"That wasn't yours to decide."

"No."

"You took my mail, Kip. Out of my own mailbox. Every morning, for a year."

"Yes."

"And then you sat next to me at night and read to me."

His face did something I had never seen.

"Yes," he said.

I stood up.

"Where's the sixth one?"

"In my workshop. I never opened it. I couldn't send it back and I couldn't throw it out."

"You could have given it to me."

"I know."

Bree had gone very still beside the stove.

I took the ring off my finger.

It came off easily. It had never fit right, and I had been too happy to say so.

I put it on the table between us.

"Thirty days," I said.

Kip stared at the ring.

"I'm going to find out what happened to me," I said. "Everything. Not what you decided I should know."

"Selah."

"I'm staying here. You can have the apartment. You can have your workshop. You can't call, you can't come by the library, and you don't touch me. Not my hand, not my hair. Nothing. Not until I say."

"And Monty?"

"He doesn't touch me either."

"You can't know that he'll agree."

"He can agree or not see me at all."

Kip nodded slowly.

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he said, "I'd have done it a hundred times."

"I know," I said. "That's the problem."

He picked up the ring and held it in his closed fist, and he walked out without another word.

Bree sat down hard in the nearest chair.

"Well," she said. "You've got a hotel room full of letters and a workshop with one more."

"Two men with a key to my life."

"Neither one gets it free."

We stood in the hall while the elevator came up.

When we went down to the street, a long black car was idling at the curb, and the back window was already sliding open.

A silver-haired woman in a camel coat smiled at me.

"Selah, sweetheart," Constance VanAlen said. "Get in. Let me fix this."

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