Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Salvatore chuckled but found himself standing the second his daughter entered the middle fray. Players used an arm’s reach to keep one another away from a ball that got shot back and forth between whoever happened to be closest. The clocked ticked down past thirty seconds remaining. If the girls out on the field knew it, one couldn’t tell.
Larkin and the guys shouted. Nico paced the barrier wall with his arms crossed, and gaze locked in. Every so often, he tilted his chin up and yelled. Carina and Sissy both joined Salvatore to stand again, both now watching.
“What’s this about a party?” Salvatore asked Sissy.
“I don’t think she wants to go, but...” She trailed off with a shrug. “What if she does?”
He couldn’t answer. Nico started hollering, and everyone around them cheered loud enough to snap Salvatore back into the moment where he needed to be.
“That’s my fuckin’ girl!” Nico yelled as Frankie took the ball down field. “That’s my girl!”
Carina squeezed his hand painfully. It didn’t matter.
Frankie took a long shot with three seconds left on the clock, and she got it.
“I think she might have asked him to go to the party later, too,” Sissy added like it was an afterthought. “But it’s nothing.”
“Nothing,” Carina echoed.
Since when did these two even like each other?
This time when she came to the stands, Nico pulled her up into their section entirely. Frankie bolted straight for Salvatore and into his arms.
“You made it,” she said.
“You did it,” he told her.
That was more important.
He chose to let the rest go.
•••
“Where did you put the keys to my Rolls?” Carina asked at the master bath’s doorway.
Salvatore, fresh out of the shower and combing through his dark hair peppered with gray, had to think about it. “Did you check my pockets?”
“And down by the front door. The hangers next to the garage door. Kitchen counters.”
“Sorry, you’re on your own.”
Carina sighed and stepped out of view from the reflection he could see in the mirror. “Did you hide them on purpose?”
Her question came from somewhere inside the bedroom. A space the two of them had only sparingly shared in over a decade of marriage. Even during the better, more tolerable points, the two rarely slept in the same bed together.
“Why would I hide your keys?”
“Because you want me to stay the night, hopefully.”
“Why are you so interested in finding your keys if you want to spend the night?” he asked, curious.
“I wasn’t going to assume.”
Salvatore laughed darkly. “This is your house, too, as you once screamed at me from the front steps while the neighbors practically took pictures, so you don’t need me to give you permission. Something else you’ve repeatedly told me throughout the course of this marriage whenever you felt the need.”
She ignored everything he said. “Wasn’t the deal that I stayed in the city until grad—”
Her words cut off as a drawer opened noisily.
“I fucking knew it,” she hissed.
“What are you bitching about?”
“And you put them with my keys, you bastard! Let me guess, not even thinking.”
Salvatore regretted his choice to bring Carina back to the estate, and he intended to tell her as much as he headed out of the bathroom. She met him in the doorway with the items in question held high in the air between them. The sight of the keys made him instantly remember where he had put them earlier when they got back from the game, like everything else in his pockets. Including the orange prescription bottle for his Tylenol with codeine.
“What the fuck is this?” she demanded, rattling the mostly empty bottle and the dangling keys. “I knew you were using again. I could tell just by the way I had to look at you in the office that morning for you to get hard.”
She glared, daring him to deny it.
“Carina, a dead man would’ve been hard looking at you that morning. Did you even look at the fucking bottle, or do you just want a reason to scream at me again? Because if all you want is to yell and fuck, let’s get it over with. That’s the best kind with you anyway. We both know we’re not gonna look at one another for at least two more weeks once it’s said and done, but I do not have the energy to fight you about something that doesn’t matter.”
Her lower lip quivered. “Fuck you.”
Salvatore stepped forward, ready to apologize. Carina moved back accordingly.
“Seriously, read the bottle,” Sal urged. “It’s codeine, at a reasonable dose. Over the counter shit was not doing it for these headaches, Carina. I needed to be able to get up and focus on what I had going on lately. I’m almost out of the bottle, and I’m not refilling it.”
Like he had been there for some of her worst years, she too had witnessed things that Salvatore would rather not speak about. To anyone. A pile of shame grew between the two of them, each adding to it over the years. The first time they ever fucked, he’d been high.