The Wife He Never Knew I Became novel · Chapter 17 of 32
Chapter 17: Say It Again
He kissed me on the hotel steps first.
With the flashes going off, he put his hand on my jaw and kissed me slowly.
I kissed him back with my ring hand flat on his chest.
When he lifted his head, a photographer on the bottom step said, "Holy hell," out loud.
In the car my phone rang before we'd left the curb.
Mei, screaming. Not words. Just screaming, for nine full seconds.
"I'm watching it on Vanessa's live," she shouted. "She forgot to stop it! Thirty thousand people watched you take that ring off the chain! I'm going to die. I'm dead. Put it on my headstone."
"Mei."
"Margaret's face, Lena! Like a ghost found out she was dead!"
Holden laughed so hard he had to pull over on the bridge.
At home he stopped me at the front door, the way he did every night.
He held out his hand.
I put my hand in his with nothing in it.
Tonight there was nothing to give him.
He looked down at my hand in his, at the platinum on my finger.
"I don't know what to do with my hands," he said.
"I have some ideas."
He took my face in both of them.
"Say it again," he said.
"I'm your wife."
"Louder. We're not in a ballroom."
I laughed, and he swallowed the laugh, and walked me backwards into the house without turning on a single light.
Then he stopped, reached past me and switched every one of them on.
"No more dark," he said.
He didn't kiss me right away.
He stood in the middle of the living room with every light blazing and just looked at me, like he'd never been allowed to before.
I felt the glass wall cold through the back of my dress.
"Take off your shoes," he said.
I did.
He came toward me slowly, unbuttoning his jacket, and dropped it on the floor.
The empty chain slid out of the pocket and clinked against the wood.
"Fourteen months," he said. "I've wanted you in every room of this house with the lights on."
"So have I."
"Then why are you shaking?"
Because you're looking at me like you finally own me, I thought.
"Because I want you to," I said.
He stopped an inch away, close enough that I could feel the heat off his chest.
"Want me to what?"
"Take everything off and fuck me where everyone on the water can see."
His jaw tightened.
"Turn around."
I turned, and he unzipped my dress, one slow inch at a time, his knuckles dragging down my spine.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Wife He Never Knew I Became are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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