While He Built Her Home novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Not Tonight

Clayton's POV

I had walked her to this door twice before, and both times I had stopped at the bottom step.

This time she turned the key, pushed the door open and stood back to let me through.

"After you," Valerie said.

The kitchen light was off.

She switched on the lamp over the stove, and I saw the island, and the calendar folded in half on it.

She picked it up.

For a moment she stood there with the paper in both hands, looking at Jared's handwriting across seven days.

Then she tore it down the middle, put the halves in the trash and washed her hands.

"Better," she said.

"Better?"

"I've been wanting to do that since the gala."

I stood by the table with my jacket on.

I am thirty-six, and I have framed houses in snowstorms.

I could not figure out where to put my hands.

"Valerie."

"Don't ask me if I'm sure."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were."

"I was going to say something else."

"Say it, then."

She dried her hands on a dish towel and turned.

She was standing very straight, and her chin was up.

"I've thought about you for longer than I should have," I said. "Before any of this. Since the day I came to Alder Street to fix your back door."

"Three years ago."

"You made me eat a sandwich. You asked about my father."

"You told me. You never tell anyone anything."

"I wanted to tell you. That's what scared me."

She crossed the kitchen.

She put one hand flat on my chest, over my jacket, the same hand I had watched hold a pill bottle up to forty people.

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