The Man Stalking Me Said Stop Working Alone, and the Kind Vet Was the One Who Let My Tire Down novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: My Hand
I opened the door at ten past six in the morning, in the gray before sunrise, and he was standing on the landing with his hands at his sides.
I had come off shift and walked up the stairs.
He had come up the back way, the exterior stair behind the bookstore, and I had not heard him.
He stood exactly where my door ended and the dark began, a foot from the threshold.
"You said never at my door," I said.
"You said never," said Matt.
"You also opened it."
"I opened it," I said.
"I'm not coming in unless you say so."
"I know," I said.
My apartment behind me was dim and warm.
I had left one lamp on, and a bed made badly, and a kettle that had gone cold.
I stood in a gray sweatshirt with my hair out of its braid and nothing on under it.
I had told him I would take off my clothes, and I had meant it, and it had taken me until now to get to the door.
"Hold out your hand," I said.
He did.
It was the right one, palm up, as he had held it in the lot.
I took it.
His fingers closed around mine, warm and enormous.
I stood in the doorway holding the hand of a man whose name no one on the water would say.
"That's one," I said.
"Now the wrist."
He turned his hand over and gently circled my wrist with his thumb and two fingers, where he had hauled me out of the truck's way.
His thumb found the place where my pulse beat and rested there.
I could feel it hammering against him.
"Is that where you want it?" he said.
"Say it."
"Yes.
"And the forearm.
"Slowly."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Man Stalking Me Said Stop Working Alone, and the Kind Vet Was the One Who Let My Tire Down are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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