Page 82 of Love Him Like Water

“Better now,” I admitted. They were always awful the second day, hence the pain patch even though it didn’t last long.

“Yeah?” he asked, sounding intrigued. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, and I could imagine orgasms from him each month to ease the pains.

On the table, his phone was letting out a steady stream of dings and vibrations.

He ignored them for a few minutes.

But when I heard his sigh, I knew the moment was over, that I was about to lose him again. Even before he was patting me to get up, then tucking himself away, and standing, before fetching his phone.

I tried not to feel disappointed as I lost all of his attention to his phone, to whoever was on the other side of it.

Then he was grumbling to himself.

“Gotta go,” he said, already forgetting all about me as he turned and made his way to the door.

Within ten minutes of us both coming, he was gone.

I walked on numb legs to the kitchen, turning the water back on, and trying to talk myself out of wallowing in my feelings of disappointment.

What had I expected?

That he would curl up with me for hours, telling me about all his hopes and dreams, asking me about mine?

That was certainly what I wanted.

But I knew it wasn’t something I could have.

I wore his brief moments of kindness like beads on a bracelet, as if I could maybe use it as a rosary, praying for the day he might love me like I loved him.

I took my tea back to my bed that would remain empty the entire night, wondering if maybe the idea of happily-ever-afters was just the stuff of the stories my mom used to read to me, or the books I devoured for years.

That maybe this was as good as it got.

But as I drifted off to sleep, I knew that this, whatever this was, was never going to be enough.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Renzo

Someone was fucking with me.

No, let me rephrase that.

Someone inside my organization was fucking with me.

It took a while to understand what was going on, why these fucking businesses that had been loyal with their payments for so long weren’t paying, why I was getting push-back from smaller crews instead of just giving me a kick-up, why I’d been feeling so much tension inside my own family for the past few weeks.

Someone was being disloyal.

Someone might even be making a move to take me out.

“What’d he look like?” I asked the convenience store owner who, when I’d shown up to collect my bag, had said I don’t have any more.

Something about the wording rubbed me wrong, making me ask what he meant by any more since I hadn’t been around since the last week.

Who’d promptly informed me that he’d paid my man a few days ago.

And, suddenly, it all fucking fell into place.

---