Page 58 of Disarming Caine

Samantha

Antoniolayacrossthebed in my hotel room, flipping through a thick book chronicling my life. For a man who’d worn suits to most of our early meetings and dressed like a model while we were in Naples, his faded denim and t-shirt seemed out of place. He propped his head on his right hand, turning pages slowly, while I packed the last few items I owned. “You don’t strike me as the scrapbooking type.”

“Cass made it.” I should have hidden the scrapbook at the bottom of a bin before he saw it.

“Before or after?” He looked up, hand paused on a page.

“After.” I pulled the final shirt off its hanger. “It was maybe two days after her diagnosis, my first day back in Brenton, and she dragged me out to the craft store. She dropped about five hundred dollars that day alone, buying books, stickers, pages, tools, everything she could get her hands on. Then we took some online classes together, and she was off to the races.”

“You took classes with her?”

“Yeah. You’re definitely the only artist in this relationship.” Folding the shirt, I dropped it into the bin with the rest of my casual clothes. “It ended up with her telling me what and where to stick or cut, and I obeyed.”

He smiled up at me, that smile that had my heart fluttering from the first day we’d met. “You’re a good soul.”

“Thanks.” I leaned over to give him a peck on the lips.

“This woman looks like you.” He pointed to a photo near the front of the book with a man, woman, and two young children. “Is she your mother?”

“Yeah.” I headed to the living room to double-check I’d gotten everything from the room. My step stuttered as I passed the balcony door, despite the shooter being in custody. They’d scrubbed the blood out of the carpet, leaving a brighter patch that was too clean.Keep moving, Sam.

“Is that all I get to hear?”

“That’s Cass and me with my parents.” I opened and closed each drawer in the side tables, desk, and kitchen, finding nothing left behind. “I’m taking the side table. They can bill me, I don’t care.”

He chuckled but kept flipping through a few pages as I got down on my hands and knees to check under the couches and chairs. “This is your father? I don’t see him in any other photos.”

“He left when I was five.” I’d run away from home that day, intent on finding him and bringing him home. His face was nowhere in my memory, just like my feelings for him. It had started as sadness and guilt, transformed to anger, and now there was nothing left. He was a fact in my history, nothing more. “I don’t know what my mom did with all the other photos, but she only kept two. The other is in one of Cass’s books.”

“Really?”

“Really.” I ducked into the spare bedroom, the first room I’d cleared. My work clothes had been stored in here, plus the dresses I’d worn on my dates with Antonio.

He raised his voice, rather than following me. “Is this too sensitive a topic?”

I crawled across the floor to ensure I had everything. The closet was clear, nothing under the bed or in the drawers.

“Would you prefer to tell me about these photos of the gorgeous woman in the wedding dress?”

Closing the spare bedroom door behind me, I made my way to the bathroom. “Seriously? You want to go from my father to my wedding?”

“As beautiful as you were in that dress, you're even more stunning today.”

I peeked through the door into the bedroom to frown at him. “You’re incorrigible.”

He winked in return. “Sì, this word suits me!”

“Cass made me add that page.” She had said it was supposed to be therapeutic, like it would help me let go.

Antonio hummed quietly but didn’t comment.

After confirming I’d cleared the bathroom, I returned to the bedroom and sat next to him. One suitcase to get me through the rest of the days I’d be staying with him. Everything else was ready to take to Cass’s for when he left for Naples.

He began to reach for me, to touch my arm or back, but made the faintest grimace and resumed flipping pages. The stitches in his shoulder were bothering him more than he’d admit. Stubborn man.

I watched in silence as he stopped on a spread near the middle. On the left, the end of high school, on the right, the start of college.

Tapping a finger on my prom photo, his voice less strained than I would have expected, he said, “Nathan Miller was your prom date?”

---