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)
But it was enough to remind me of everything that I was missing. That he was missing.
I felt like he was cheating himself, holding himself aloft of all things that might make him happy. Even when he was there, he wasn’t really ‘there.’
I was so engrossed in my thoughts of Dante that I hadn’t been paying attention to what was in front of me. I.e., the steps of my porch before I was nearly falling down them.
And what caught me weren’t my own arms, but the arms of a man that was the star of my every waking and sleeping moments.
“Dante,” I breathed, pain from my sudden movements arcing through my belly and chest. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
Dante scowled. “You left.”
I blinked. “I left a week ago. Did it take you a week to notice?”
He scowled harder. “No. What took me a week to do was find out where you were.”
I blinked again. “I’ve always been here.”
“You weren’t here. I came by every single day, at different times of the day.”
“I went for a walk every single day… and yesterday I walked and went to the grocery store. It’s just sometimes I don’t have the energy to do it until later in the day. While some days I wake up and can go right then because I have the want and desire.”
He sighed.
“You haven’t been avoiding me?”
I shook my head. “Never.”
I would never, not ever, avoid this man.
That was part of my problem, and also why I’d left. I didn’t want to follow him around like a puppy like I had been doing.
He set me up on my feet and then let me go, but his hands lingered at my waist for a few long moments as he waited to see if I had my footing.
“You want to go get something to eat with me?”
I didn’t even think to decline.
“Absolutely!”
***
“I don’t like this.”
I looked up to find Dante staring at the couple across the diner from us. And when I say across, I mean just a table’s length away. It was a small diner. One that was quaint, small, and tucked into the backwoods of Uncertain, Texas. The lake was less than a hundred yards away, and the water looked like glass.
The trees were just on the verge of losing their leaves, and the Spanish moss hanging from the trees was just starting to turn white.
“What don’t you like?” the man asked the girl.
“I don’t like that it told everyone that I was driving. Who does Apple think they are, telling me whether I can or can’t text and drive?”
Dante stiffened across from me.
“Just turn it off. I heard it’s in settings or something,” the man said distractedly, his eyes scanning the menu.
“I shouldn’t have to. I should be able to text anyone I want to text. It’s my phone, not theirs. If I want to put my life in danger—which I’m not because I know where all the freakin’ letters are—I should be able to do that.”
My brows rose at that statement. Dante’s, though? They lowered. Then he surprised the hell out of me by looking down at his water glass and clenching his jaw. His hands clutched the edge of the table, and the muscles in his arms bunched. Like he was struggling. Like he was trying to keep himself seated the only way he knew how. Brute force.
“Do what you want.”
“Texting isn’t even that bad. I mean, I don’t even have to look at the screen when I do it.”
The man with her snorted.
Dante lost it.
He stood up, pulled his phone out of his pocket, did something on the screen, and then placed it nicely on the table in front of the woman.
“That’s my wife and two kids,” he said softly. “They’re dead now because a teenage girl thought it would be okay to answer a text. It wasn’t okay. My sister didn’t react well. They went over a bridge and drowned. My wife was knocked unconscious after the impact with the river. My daughters both drowned, and I listened to them through the phone that my wife was using to talk to me on. So, you may not think it’s necessary to use that app. And that’s your prerogative. However, maybe stop and think about somebody other than yourself.”
With that, Dante walked back over to our table, gave me a look that said to follow him, and left without another word.
I watched him walk all the way out. I stopped, looked over at the table next to me, and sighed.
Standing up, I looked longingly at the food I was about to order and followed him out the door seconds later.
Dante was sitting on his motorcycle that was parked next to my car.
“You still want to go?”
He nodded once.
“You up for a ride?”
I took stock of my body.