Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 110824 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110824 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
“You heard me. I’ve spent all this time trying to look after you and make sure you were safe, and I didn’t even know that you had food allergies. You could have died! What makes it worse, you knew you couldn’t eat it and you still did!”
“Are you saying you left to go out drinking and hook up with some woman because you were mad at me?” she laughs bitterly.
“I didn’t hook up with a woman. The only woman I want is you. I believe I’ve made myself clear on that,” I snap.
“Oh, trust me. After the morning I’ve had, I’m extremely clear about where your interests lie.”
“Good,” I mutter, but I get the feeling that she doesn’t understand shit. She’s looking at me like she can’t stand the sight of me. I’ve never seen that look on her face before—ever. When she broke things off with her mother, she didn’t even look at her the way she’s looking at me now.
What the fuck is going on?
“If we’re done here, I’m going to go shower.”
“We’re not done,” I huff out, trying to control myself. I need a cool head. I can’t upset her more. I don’t have time to soothe over her feelings like I want. I have to fix whatever this is quickly. “You should never have touched that soup. You should have told me. What on Earth were you thinking? Don’t you realize that I couldn’t live without you. Fuck, what if you had died? Can you imagine what that would have done to me and that’s not even considering the fact that it would have been all my fault?” Just thinking about it now makes my hands tremble.
She frowns as she looks at me. “It’s not that kind of allergy. I don’t even have a rash this morning. It’s mild. You went to a lot of trouble for me. I didn’t want to ruin it. That’s the kind of things you do when you care about someone.”
My heart squeezes because she admitted that she cares about me. It’s not the same as love, but I’ll take it. “That’s bullshit, Gia. You don’t do anything that might harm you. You know I love you. I don’t want anything or anyone to hurt you. You don’t hide allergies or anything else that affects your health from me. It might be a mild allergy now, but what if this is one time it wasn’t a mild reaction? You can’t take chances. I won’t let you. You’re too important to me.”
“You don’t want anyone or anything to hurt me?” she asks, looking at me like I’ve grown three heads.
“That can’t be a surprise to you, can it?”
“Does that include you, Victor?”
“Of course, it does. I never want to hurt you.”
“Too late. You hurt me last night more than I would have thought possible.”
I study her face and I can see she’s serious. In my surprise, I loosen my hold. She gets up and stands, turning to look at me. I let her go. I think she’s being a little over dramatic. It was just a small tiff. She’s not really had a relationship before—Dante doesn’t count. Maybe she’s just not used to being involved with another person and her emotions are leading her.
“It was just a lover’s argument, sweetheart. We’ll probably have more of them, but that’s all it was. I would never purposely hurt you.”
With my words, her face gets even tighter. Her pain is so easy to see it kills me. I don’t know how, but I’ve made things worse.
“Who’s Morgan?”
For a moment, I think I might have heard her wrong. When I look at her face, I know I didn’t. She uses my moment of shock to move away from me. Unspoken accusations are written all over her face.
“Gia—”
“Don’t bother lying. She called this morning. It was barely four in the morning but since the two of you are such old friends and spent time together last night, I guess she figured it was alright to call.”
“Gia it’s not what you think. Morgan is a private investigator. I needed some research done. I knew she was good at her job. Running into her wasn’t planned, but I figured since I had, she was an answer to a problem I was having.”
“Funny, Morgan didn’t describe your friendship with her as work related at all.”
“Gia—”
“Have you slept with her, Victor?”
Jesus fuck. “Gia, damn it!”
“That wasn’t a yes, but yet, I think it was,” she says, her voice sounding lifeless.
“It was a lifetime ago, Gia. I haven’t touched another woman since I met you.”
“Maybe, but is it coincidence that just when we begin trying to get closer you leave me upset, hurting, and scared you’re mad at me—”
“Gia—”
She doesn’t let me finish. She interrupts me. “You leave to go out drinking and run into her and make plans to meet up again.”