Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“Whatever you say.”
I grinned as I turned my eyes back to the television screen. But the grin wasn’t due to my argument that I’d started. It was due to the fact that he’d smiled.
Smiled.
And it damn near stopped my heart.
“I like it when you smile,” I found myself saying.
Dante’s smile slowly fell from his face, but his eyes stayed on mine.
“Haven’t really had a reason to smile lately,” he murmured. “I haven’t laughed like I have the last two weeks since…they died.”
His inability to say the actual words—since my wife and children died—was telling.
I looked over at where Mary was asleep on the couch.
“You have her,” I murmured. “And you now have me. Don’t let it go so long again.”
Dante winked.
He freakin’ winked!
And then he turned his eyes back to the TV.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Day 19 Post Surgery
I was back in my own home, and that was largely due to the fact that Dante wasn’t there to stop me.
I knew I’d hear about it when he got home from work, but it was time.
I was becoming too dependent on him. That, and I was afraid that I was falling in love with him.
In love with a man that I knew was about as emotionally distant as a vacuum cleaner.
So yes, I’d gone home. And yes, I’d decided not to tell him that I was doing it.
Why? Because I knew if I had told him, then he’d have tried his level best to get me to stay.
Chapter 16
If you keep pronouncing the L in salmon, I’m going to stab you in the dick with a kah-nife.
-Dante to his brother, Travis
Dante
I arrived home to find it empty. Not just empty of life, but empty of emotion.
Not seeing her in my home was like a blow straight to the sternum.
I tried not to let it bother me that she wasn’t there. I also tried not to think about the fact that she didn’t tell me she was going. Instead, she’d waited until I was gone, and had snuck out like a thief in the night.
Not a thief.
Just a woman that I was beginning to depend on.
Goddammit.
The worst thing, though?
It was the way Mary walked through the lower level of the house and called out for ‘Obie.’
“Mary, girl,” I called to my daughter. “You hungry?”
“Obie?”
I walked toward where she was standing next to the couch, her hand on the arm as she patted it.
Yes, that was exactly where Cobie normally was when we got home.
I had a feeling that I’d made her feel somewhat unwelcome since she never seemed to move from the one spot.
The two times that she’d done it, first venturing into the kitchen and eating out of my wife’s bowl, and the second time venturing into the laundry room to clean the quilt…well, those two times hadn’t been very good for me. I’d literally overreacted, and I’d immediately felt like shit afterward.
I’d thought that we were getting over the timidity, though.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t quite overcome that obstacle seeing as she was no longer there.
She’d rather leave without a word than tell me to my face that she was leaving.
Which I couldn’t blame her for.
I hadn’t been the nicest person in the world to deal with.
“Cobie went home, baby,” I said to her as I held my hands out. “You want some dinner?”
“Nuts.”
I rolled my eyes. That was Cobie’s doing.
Over the course of the last month, Cobie had introduced Mary to quite a few things, peanuts being one of them.
After expressing that peanuts were her favorite snack, I’d gone by the store and gotten her some in a ‘party container.’
It was massive and likely had enough nuts in it to last a normal person an entire year. Mary and Cobie, though? Yeah, it lasted them a week.
And now that was all that Mary ever wanted.
Nuts.
Morning, noon, and night.
“You can have a handful, but you’re not having that for dinner,” I told her, walking into the kitchen with her in my arms. “How does chicken sound?”
I asked this as I opened up the freezer, pulling out a bag of frozen chicken nuggets.
The thought of eating them nearly made my stomach turn, but without Cobie here to eat, there was no reason to open up one of the bigger boxed dinners. I couldn’t eat it all myself.
And Mary didn’t eat enough to feed a baby bird.
“Yuck!”
Snorting as I closed the fridge, I turned around and was about to switch the oven on when I heard a knock at the door.
I hesitated with my finger over the ‘cook’ button and decided to turn it on in a minute.
My irrational heart was hoping that Cobie had come to her senses and returned.
I couldn’t have been further from the truth.
After putting Mary down on the ground to play, I walked to the door with a weird sense of hopefulness making my steps hurried.