DON’T STOP (Lila and Darrell) novel Chapter 110

Chapter 110

Chapter 110

Norman

She had left her necklace on the bed.

I noticed it when I was getting up

–

$5 vou

a thin gold chain, small and delicate, curled on the white pillow like it had shipped

sometime during the night. I picked it up and held it for a moment, then closed my fist around it.

I would have to return it.

I shook my head softly at myself, got dressed, and checked out.

The traffic back to my apartment was brutal. I sat in it for forty minutes, jacket off. the morning heat doing its worst thi the windshield, and arrived home considerably less composed than I preferred to be. I showered, changed, and wood t kitchen drinking coffee and telling myself that returning the necklace was a simple, straightforward completely unremarkable thing to do.

I picked up my keys and left.

I knew where she lived. I had always known – it wasn’t something I’d gone looking for: it was simply information that existed in my head the way certain things do when someone has been a significant part of your life. Her building was a clean, modern block in a quiet part of the city, the kind of address that said exactly what she wanted it to say about her

I rang the doorbell.

Nothing.

I waited, then rang again.

Still nothing.

I stepped back and looked up at the building. Her car was in the lot. She was here, She had to be here – Daisy Wright Dad not leave for work the morning after a gala without at least three hours of preparation, and it was barely past noos

“Daisy?” I called toward the door.

Nothing

I was about to reach for my phone when I heard a sound from inside High and sharp, cutting through the Clearly enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up

My stomach dropped

I tried the handle Locked

I looked at the keypad on the door frame A small illuminated panel, six digits, banking patiently

I hesitated

Then I raised my hand and typed in a date

Not her late mother’s birthday Not hers

Something else entirely. A date that lived in a part of me I didn’t open often that sat quietly in the back of everything like a room he had learned to walk past without looking in

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Chapter 110

I stood there for a second with my hand still raised.

She had never changed it. Did she still think about it?

bs var

Something moved through my chest that I wasn’t going to name right now, that I filed away immediately and firmly. walked away from the way I always did.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

“Daisy?”

The music hit me first-loud and bouncing off every wall, coming from upstairs. I exhaled. She hadn’t heard the dor She hadn’t heard anything. She was fine.

I closed the door behind me and stood in the entrance, looking around. The house was clean and ordered, smelling fa of cleaning products, nothing at all like the state I’d been told it had been in recently. I put my hands in my pockets an waited.

The music stopped.

Footsteps.

And then she appeared in the corridor doorway.

White towel. Wet hair wrapped up. Her skin was still warm from the shower, her cheeks flushed, and she was completel unprepared for another human being to be standing in her house.

Her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened.

I looked at her and felt something I had absolutely no business feeling at twelve in the afternoon on a Saturday in my ex wife’s corridor.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

I reached into my pocket and held up the necklace.

“You forgot this.”

She walked over and took it from my hand without a word, fingers closing around it quickly and turned her back to me immediately.

“You can leave now.”

However, I didn’t move

I was still thinking about the code The six digits that had come to my fingers without any effort at all that I had typed in no time had passed, like nothing had changed. The fact that she had never changed it was doing something to me that I couldn’t shake off and couldn’t explain and couldn’t put down

“Don’t tell me you’re still there.” she said, her back sull to me and you can leave

Lexhaled

“About that door code

“Please go.” Her words were quiet and final “Don’t talk about it right now.”

Something shifted in me. Three years of carrying it, of filing it away, of walking past the closed room in my chest without looking in it just ran out of space all at once.

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Chapter 110

“I’m sorry.”

My voice shook on it. I heard it shake and I couldn’t fix it.

She turned around slowly.

–

EX 58 wou

not the ice queen not the CEO, not the

She looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen on her face in three years composed, untouchable woman she had rebuilt herself into. Just Daisy Guarded and raw and waiting

“Why should you be?” she asked.

I looked at her standing there gripping the necklace in her fist, and I said the thing I had never said out loud to a single person in three years.

“It’s my fault our baby died.” The words came out stripped bare. No composure, nothing to hide behind. I left you whe you were at your lowest. When you needed me the most. I came with divorce papers when you were still grieving and truly, deeply sorry.”

The corridor was completely silent.

She swallowed. Something moved across her face – pain, and underneath it something older and more exhausted than pain.

“Go away, Norman,” she said quietly. “I really don’t want to talk about that.”

“I know-”

“It’s just a door code.” She said it carefully, like she was convincing herself as much as me. “Don’t put it in your rund too much.” She looked past me toward the front door. “When you leave, shut the door properly.”

She walked past me without looking at me and went into the bedroom. The door closed.

I stood in the corridor alone.

My eyes were burning. I looked up at the ceiling and pressed my lips together hard and stood very still in the quiet of her house with everything I had just said hanging in the air around me like something that couldn’t be taken back

I reached up and wiped my eyes quickly. Sniffed once.

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