Page 221 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
I got through prison, thinking she’d be waiting for me, and she wasn’t there. Then I saw her again, and I just needed a way to talk to her.
I love her too much not to have her in my life.
Falling silent, Annabelle’s rapidly blinking eyes take in my turmoil as she stares up from her phone. “Yeah, but you love her like a brother. Because you’re her brother. Brothers love their sisters. But to pretend to feel more. Like, what she felt for you all those years?—”
Sealing her lips shut, Annabelle refuses to say more, changing the subject.
What?
What did she feel?
My fingers shake as I type a reply.
Ambrose:
Finish that sentence.
“I’ve already said too much. Just come clean, because I can’t keep this kind of secret from her.”
Ambrose:
Because you’ve never kept our secrets before?
“Meaning?”
Ambrose:
IYKYK. And I think you know.
“You know what I think? Not what I know, but what I think. Losing you, hurt more than anything, and I think this—you, pretending to be a man who is interested in her—will be too much. God, she can’t even remember the night her parents died because that’s what took you from her.”
Ambrose:
She lost me before that night.
“She wanted you back, and you know that.”
Ambrose:
Then why was she with him? Why is she still hanging around him when I am back?
“Maybe because she doesn’t wanna lose anything else! I mean, he doesn’t exactly have much to offer, does he? He just tells her what she wants to hear, reels her in, and then his drama starts again.”
Things had been shared in confidence when I’d listened in on conversations between Dollie and Annabelle. Shane had neverhit Dollie before that night, but he was still an aggressive asshole who used fear tactics to control her.
“Don’t be like him. Don’t lie to her face.”
I’m typing before she finishes her sentence.
Ambrose:
I can’t tell her I’m Lucky.
Please, don’t you do it, either.
I could lose her forever.
I can’t, Annabelle. I can’t lose her.
