They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Everything He Kept

I did not get up from the wash stone.

My legs would not have held me, and I was not sure I wanted them to.

"How long?" I said.

He did not pretend to misunderstand.

"Nine days," Chengzhi said. "I sat down to write the Rising River out again, and the last line came back with the rest of me."

"Nine days."

"I woke the next morning and I knew everything. The road. The letter. All of it."

He stood at the corner of the house with the quilt held shut at his chest.

His feet were bare on the snow, and he did not seem to notice.

I stood up, and the letter shook in my hand.

"Three nights ago I sat on the edge of your bed," I said, "and told you things I have never told my mother."

"I know."

"You were asleep."

"I wasn't," he said.

I put my wet hand over my eyes.

I had told him I was afraid every morning that he would look at me and not know why I was there.

I had told him the sound his breathing made was the best thing in the house.

I had told him, once, where I wished he would put his hands.

"You let me say all of it," I said.

"Yes."

"You are a coward and a thief."

"The letter said coward," he said. "I'm only adding thief."

I laughed, and hated that I did, and it turned into something wet halfway out.

"Why?"

He took a step toward me.

"Because I could not stand yet," he said. "My hand shook. I could not hold a brush for a line. I was going to be the man who asked you in a borrowed voice, from a bed, with his mother watching."

"I would have said yes."

"That is exactly why."

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