The Man Who Can't Let Go novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Day Thirty

"Tell me," Tobias said, in the lobby of the Meridian, with two hundred donors streaming past them.

Virginia took his sleeve and led him into the empty coat room off the lobby.

It still smelled of cedar and other people's furs.

"I have a bench in Portland," she said. "A real one, with a window."

"A woman who owns a bindery gave it to me the winter I got there."

"I know."

"You know?"

"My mother told me. At the hospital."

He kept his face quiet.

"She said the lease runs to April, and the library has offered you a position."

"She had me followed."

"She had you looked into. It's the same thing."

"I should have told you myself."

Virginia pressed her hands together.

"I didn't, because I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it."

"And now?"

"Now I'm going back."

The word hung there, and he did not move.

"Not for good," she said quickly. "For ten days."

"I'll close up my rooms and see the woman who held the bench."

"I want to decide what I keep without you in the next room."

"Alone."

She watched his hands.

They were clenched at his sides, the knuckles pale, and she saw the thing she had been afraid of in him all month.

It was the grip of a man who held on hardest to whatever he was most afraid to lose.

"I'm not asking you to like it," she said. "I'm asking you not to follow."

"That's a lot."

"I know."

"That's the whole thing, Ginny. I've never been able to let you out of my sight for long."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Man Who Can't Let Go from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.