Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
I can’t remember the last time I ate something that wasn’t manipulated beyond recognition. The shelter’s meals are a means to fill my stomach. They don’t nourish it. Their eggs taste like chalk mixed with too much salt.
The meatloaf is worse. I push aside the rumors about where the meat comes from when I eat it because dining at a shelter allows me to put every dollar I earn toward the agreement that will award me custody of Gabriele.
I used to live in shelters too, but I quickly learned that a cardboard camp in a wet alleyway is safer than being preyed upon by people paid to help. I only had to fend off one person when I was living on the streets. In shelters, I stopped counting when I reached double digits.
It wasn’t fellow shelter-goers expecting me to do anything for a candy bar.
It was the staff.
Although I now set aside two hundred dollars a month for a dump, I eat whatever is on offer, and I do it fast. Hunger makes people watch each other in ways I don’t like. They’re vultures. They won’t kill you, but you should never die in front of them. Not even mentally.
Yet here I am, inhaling two slices of toast without pausing for breath. I don’t realize how fast I’m eating until the plate is empty and Dante eyes me with an expression I can’t decipher.
Embarrassment prickles across my skin. “Sorry.” I wipe at my mouth even though there’s nothing there.
Dark locks brush Dante’s forehead as he stitches his brows. “Don’t apologize.”
I gesture at the plate, mortified by how fast I devoured the food. “My table manners are usually better than that.”
“You were hungry,” he says, as if the truth is the simplest commodity in the world.
It is, but I haven’t used it in so long that I’m struggling to remember that.
A pricey cologne infuses my senses when the cuff of Dante’s business shirt brushes my thigh. “I can make you another plate.”
“No.” The word comes out snappier than intended. “I’m full.”
He studies me for a moment, trying to understand my refusal. Two meals in one day are a necessity for most, but to me, it’s a luxury I can’t afford to get accustomed to.
“Thank you.” Gratitude is all I can offer without giving in to the chemistry brewing between us, so that’s what I give. “It was delicious.” Not quite as delicious as your cologne, but a close second.
Needing to leave before I forget why I can’t stay, I hop off the kitchen counter. As I move away from Dante, a shift in the air spikes my pulse. The bedtime story he told Camille drifts back to me, uninvited and imposing. The dancer who rode into Happily Ever After with the dragon and the princess was a beautiful story, but some of his points were a little awry.
“I don’t think you’re a dragon.”
Dante’s mouth curves, but the silence drags on until the thread I’m clutching dangerously frays.
“How long has Camille been mute?”
I’ve told myself on repeat the past hour that I shouldn’t care, but I do.
Dante quickly hides the snippet of pain flaring in his eyes, but I see it, nonetheless.
His pain gravitates me toward him how gravity does with anything that’s falling.
After glancing away, he pulls the rug out from beneath my feet. “The only time I’ve heard her voice was when she thanked you.”
My heart painfully twists. Now everything makes sense. The shock, the hope, and how my presence must have felt like both a miracle and a wound at once. Imagine standing there, hearing your daughter talk for the first time, only for her words to be directed at a stranger.
Gosh.
“Dante…” I whisper, because anything louder would be too overwhelming.
He still doesn’t look at me. His shoulders are hunched and his hands hang loosely at his sides, as if trained to mask the pain but never show it.
With battle lines forgotten, I inch closer. I shouldn’t—the chemistry between us is still blisteringly intense—but the desire to soothe the agony in his eyes draws me to him like a moth to a flame.
My heart backflips when I meet him in the living room. Wordlessly, I encourage eye contact. When I get it, electricity hisses as erratically as the pounding of my pulse.
“She loves you. You know that, right?”
When he delays replying, I gather his balled hands in mine. I understand his fear. I’ve experienced the same with Gabriele, and I imagine it growing worse when I’m finally granted custody.
“She may not be able to express it, Dante, but she shows she cares in actions.”
My limbs tingle when he sheepishly nods.
This is where I should walk away and maintain the arm’s-length theory I use with anyone not named Gabriele, but I can’t. I want to comfort him and weather him through his latest storm. I crave it more than my lungs crave their next breath.