Too Late, Alpha, I'm Your Pen Pal novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Counter

The sign on the front door said CLOSED FOR INVENTORY, in Gerda's handwriting, though Gerda had never taken inventory in her life.

She handed me the key at seven on Wednesday morning and walked out the front without a word.

"Where are you going?"

"To visit my sister," she said. "She lives in a very distant county."

"Gerda."

"The shutters stick," she said. "Pull them hard."

I pulled the shutters down over the front windows one by one.

The store went dim and gold, with stripes of light across the floor and the smell of coffee and old wood.

I was counting the drawer when I heard a key turn in the back door.

I knew that step.

He came through the stockroom with an envelope in his hand and no coat.

He stopped under the lamp, and the light caught the silver ring in his ear.

"Gerda let me in," he said.

"Gerda is visiting her sister."

"So I heard."

He put the envelope on the counter between us and did not push it toward me.

I did not touch it.

"I'm not here about that," he said. "Not yet."

"What are you here about?"

"Last Friday, on the dock."

"What about it?"

"You said 'yours.'"

My pulse jumped in my throat.

"I did."

"I've been hearing it all week."

I walked a boundary line with a man who talks sixteen hours a day, and I heard nothing but that.

He came around the end of the counter.

There was no one on the other side now, only me, and the register, and the light.

"I closed the shutters," I said stupidly.

"I noticed."

"It's daytime."

"I know. I want to see you in it."

He stopped in front of me and lifted his hand to my cheek.

His fingers were warm and rough.

I leaned into the palm, and shut my eyes, and he kissed me.

It was slow.

It was the longest, kindest kiss he had ever given me, a hand cupping my jaw, the other low on my back.

I wound my arms round his neck and pulled him against me.

"Don't make me wait for tonight," I said.

"I wasn't going to."

He lifted me by the waist and set me on the counter, among the pencils and the candy jar.

The wood was cool under my thighs.

"Lennart. The shutters."

"They're shut."

"People walk by."

"They'll hear nothing. I'll be quiet."

"You are not quiet."

"I will be," he said, "for about ten seconds."

I laughed, and he kissed the laugh off my mouth.

He undid my cardigan one button at a time, slowly.

It slid off my shoulders onto the register.

He lifted my shirt over my head, and unhooked my bra.

For a moment he only stood back and looked at me in the striped light.

"Daylight," he said. "I've waited three years to see you in daylight."

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