Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
And since I couldn’t exactly tell him that I’d been momentarily jealous of a woman who’d cooked for him in the past, I rushed to cover.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked instead.
“I’m not telling you anything that isn’t already public knowledge,” he said, shrugging. “Where were you?”
“Are you my keeper?” I asked, stiffening.
“Just curious. Not saying you have to tell me.”
“I was dropping my sister back off at campus. She came over for dinner.”
“Explains the dishes,” he said, and I couldn’t quite tell if he was actually maybe momentarily jealous that I’d possibly spend my evening with a man, or if I was just sort of hoping he was jealous. “Didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Yeah. Wren. She was born when I was thirteen.”
“Still puts her a little old for college, no?”
“You’re never too old to get an education,” I said, then immediately cringed at how much of a teacher I sounded like right then. “She decided not to go when she was younger. But she’s really enjoying it now.”
“You got a car?” he asked.
“What?”
“You said you dropped her off.”
“Oh, no. I, ah, I took the cab with her, then back here.”
“Why?”
I didn’t want to answer that.
It was touchy territory.
“I’m overprotective, I guess,” I said, reaching for mugs.
“Your sister, she look like you?” he asked.
“Oh, no. She’s so gorgeous. I mean, drop-dead pretty. We have the same smile, though.”
“You got a mirror around here?” he asked.
“I know. The spinach gets in your teeth, right?” I asked, turning to look at him, finding him shaking his head at me.
“Nah, baby. Figure you must not have a mirror around this place if you don’t think you’re gorgeous too,” he said.
And I swear… butterflies.
I was pretty sure I went my whole adult life never getting butterflies. Unless we were counting ones caused by fictional men in spicy books. I was starting to think they were a made-up phenomena.
Yet there was no mistaking the fluttering in my chest at his words.
“So, what’s she like?” he asked as I just stood there dumbly, watching him with two empty mugs in my hands.
“Wren?” I asked, snapping out of it. “Wren is amazing. She’s sweet and kind and just… good. On the quiet side, though. And inclined to doubt herself. I worry I didn’t do a good enough job with her to boost her self-esteem.”
“How would that be your responsibility?” he asked as I handed him a mug, then turned to get the cream and sugar.
“When Wren was just shy of thirteen, our parents were driving back from a dinner party at a friends’ house on Long Island. Their brakes gave out, and they… they didn’t make it,” I said, still feeling the stabbing of shock and grief, even all these years later.
“Sorry,” Salvatore said, shaking his head. “That sucks.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It was hard. Harder on Wren, though. She had to pick up and leave, move in with me in my tiny apartment, deal with me as I tried to figure out how to not only take care of myself, but her too.”
“Sounds like she turned out alright. So you must have figured it all out,” he said, shrugging.
“Do you have any siblings?”
“Nah. Got a big family, but no siblings.”
“Your parents…” I started, knowing it was a touchy subject, and since he was a fair bit older than me, I figured there was a higher chance they were no longer with us.
“Passed while I was inside.”
“Inside of what?” I asked because, clearly, this whole criminal lifestyle thing was new to me.
“Inside of the prison walls,” he said, lips twitching.
“The… oh! Oh,” I added. “Wow. Ah… were you… you know… there long?”
“Fifteen,” he said.
“Months?”
“Years.”
“Fifteen years?” The words choked out of me.
Fifteen years.
That was a long time to be away from your life, from your loved ones. I couldn’t imagine.
“Yeah, it felt every bit as long as your face says you’re thinking.”
“Have you been out long?”
“A few years.”
“Wow. Was it weird? You know… to be free again?”
“Yeah. And no. Spent more time free than locked up. Shit had changed, but not enough that I felt too lost. Still can’t get behind all this shit, though,” he said, producing his cell phone, and casually tossing it onto the counter. Without a case on it.
My frugal heart clutched itself in my chest.
I only ever got a new phone every five or six years, when they refused to hold a charge anymore. And I kept them in the toughest cases available until the day I got a new one, so I was sure nothing ever happened to them.
“What about the phone can you not get behind?” I asked. “Aside from putting it in a proper case,” I added.
“Case, huh?” he asked looking down at it. “Probably why I shattered six of these so far this year.”
“Six?” I croaked.