Page 9 of Thorns of Silence
I took a moment to slide over Dante’s impressive build with fresh eyes. Two years ago, he always opted for jeans and a leather jacket. Today, he wore a custom Italian suit that hugged his muscles and promised mouthwatering abs. The darkness that had lurked under his skin then was now out in the open—in every look, every smile, every move. He was proud of it, and it was scary as fuck.
Yet, I refused to cower.
I clenched my jaw, scolding myself for even noticing his body. I didn’t fucking care if he was proclaimed a saint, he’d always be the devil to me.
“Step a single foot in my apartment and I’ll kill you,” I signed.
Then I turned my back to him for the second time that evening and walked away without another glance. Let him get a taste of his own medicine.
I started to climb the stairs to our apartment, needing to burn off some of this anger, when I ran into Amon. His step faltered, his attention on me.
“I put her on the couch. She’ll need to drink a lot of water.” He spoke slowly, even throwing an ASL sign for drink and water in there to be sure I understood. I’d be impressed if not for his relation to Dante Leone.
I nodded, then brushed past him to get to my sister.
FOUR
PHOENIX
Isat on the couch with my sister sleeping next to me and my girlfriends sprawled on the living room floor of our little Parisian apartment. I was… perturbed. My skin buzzed with an electricity I hadn’t felt in two years.
Since I’d last felt his touch.
I couldn’t erase the look Dante gave me in the club from my mind.Vehement and lustful,but there was something else there too.
He acted like he didn’t even know me. Almost as if he was disturbed by seeing me.
How dare he choose the coward’s way out and pretend what we had could be easily dismissed! I choked on my fury, fighting the urge to reach out and punch him. Hit him. Scratch him. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to make him feel what I’d felt two years ago.
A ray of light from the streetlamp poured through the window and I let my mind wander back into the past, to that naive girl who blindly fell for Dante Leone.
I wasn’t alone.
Somehow, someway, my heart insisted he’d come through. He said it’d be the three of us, dancing through life together. Right?
Except, self-doubt was a bitch. Slowly, day by fucking day, I started to question it all. Every kiss. Every promise. Every goddamned thing.
My chest constricted as I wiped my tearstained face with the back of my hand.
It had been months—seven months, one week, and five days to be exact—since I’d seen or heard from him.
My heart kept whispering, “He’s coming. Just hang in there, he’s coming. He promised he’d always come.”
Well, then where was he?
I called him. I texted him. I paged him using our 911 code.
Click. Click. Click.
I checked my phone again. Only a text from my sister and friends. Reina missed me; she was worried about me. She kept questioning me on what the doctors were saying, and I didn’t like lying to her.
My phone vibrated again.
Can we FaceTime? I miss you.
I FaceTimed Reina right before I took a nap, but I didn’t want to talk to her again yet. I missed her too, but lying to her via camera was harder than via text. So I closed the message and started pacing around the room.
There wasn’t much to do. It was too cold to go outside, the December temperatures here low enough to freeze you down to the bone. Growing up in California, the only time we experienced snow was when we sought it out, which wasn’t very often.
