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)
I observed him, taking in everything about him that I could. He had blond hair that was short on the sides and spiky on the top. But I doubted that he put gel in his hair to keep it spiky like some men did.
His eyes were blue and so freakin’ clear that they reminded me of something out of a storybook. Or maybe a Disney movie. His eyes were impossibly hard not to stare at.
Then there was his chest.
Dante wasn’t lacking in the muscles department. He had a lot of them. I could see them through his white T-shirt—and did I mention that a white t-shirt and jeans were my absolute favorite thing ever on a man? Because they were. And on Dante they were perfection.
I could see his nipples.
I could see his nipples!
Dear, sweet baby Jesus!
“You want to go to your bed or back downstairs?”
I blinked, coming out of my contemplations of his various assets, and pursed my lips in thought. “I think I’d like to sit on the couch. When I was in the hospital, it hurt way worse to be lying flat on my back rather than propped up in the bed.”
Dante nodded, his eyes contemplative as he looked down at Mary.
“Let me take her down first so she doesn’t try to follow us, and then I’ll come back for you.”
I stayed where he put me while he did just that, and wondered if I should ask him to leave.
He’d done a lot for me. Surely, he was ready to go.
I was positive that he had stayed way longer than he’d intended, and when I told him so moments later as he arrived back in the bathroom for me, he looked at me incredulously.
“I’m not leaving you here alone the day you get home from the hospital where you had a surgery that left you in tremendous pain, weak and barely able to walk.”
I snapped my mouth shut.
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay if you don’t want to,” I started again.
“For now, I’m exactly where I want to be,” he informed me. “Now, let’s go. We have about two hours or so before we have to head home.”
I did as he asked. Then again, I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter seeing as he’d picked me up and carried me downstairs.
***
Dante
Two and a half hours later, I bundled up both Mary and Cobie—who was good and drugged up on her pain medication once again—and got them settled in my truck.
Cobie had given me a half-hearted reply of ‘yes’ when I’d asked her if she wanted to come to my house, and I drove us all home.
Both Cobie and Mary slept the entire way there, leaving me to my thoughts.
And they definitely weren’t good.
At first, all I could think about was that Cobie was sitting in Lily’s spot. Then, it was how Cobie was going to be staying in Lily’s and my house and how I wouldn’t be able to just get rid of her if a freak out started.
Minutes after pulling into my driveway—the one that was just down the road from my brothers’ houses—I moved before I had time to think.
I got Mary first, and instead of putting her on the floor, I laid her on the couch.
She’d been a love/snuggle bug for hours today with Cobie, and she was sleeping just as much as Cobie was, which was abnormal for her.
Then again, there wasn’t really a ‘norm’ when it came to toddlers. They did what they wanted and always would.
After making sure Mary was comfortable on the couch, I went back outside for Cobie and carried her into my home as well. The guilt immediately hit me as soon as we crossed the threshold.
I didn’t see Mary as a betrayal to my wife’s memory. She was a baby, my baby. Lily would have expected me to care for her, to bring her home.
But carrying another woman into our home and sitting her in my wife’s favorite spot? Yeah, that felt very much like a betrayal to Lily’s memory. It burned as I swallowed the bile down.
Chapter 13
Stupid people are like glow sticks. I want to bend them in half until they break, and then shake the shit out of them until their light turns on.
-Cobie’s secret thoughts
Cobie
I woke up hurting, but not nearly as bad as I'd been hurting when I got home yesterday. Then again, that had a lot to do with the fact that Dante forced the meds down my throat, whether I was awake or not.
The first time he woke me in the night, I was disoriented. I didn't know where I was. I wasn’t sure who was standing over me, nor what was going on. But, slowly my eyes had focused.
I quickly realized where I was and who exactly was standing over me.