Page 141 of Oblivion

With a nod and a warning to lock my door, he left. I showered and pulled on my PJs, then slid into bed next to the broken and battered love of my life.

CHAPTERFIFTY-THREE

Penny

I woke in the middle of the night to a tormented groan. Freezing and listening, I held my breath until I was sure I’d imagined it.

Each elevated thump of my heart drummed in my ears long after I relaxed against the starchy linen again. Now wide awake, my thoughts ran wild, and the ones about Dante and Sadie were by far the most prominent.

Sighing, I flipped back the blankets, only to still when a hand clamped down on my waist.

“Don’t,” Dante’s voice, rough with sleep and alcohol, commanded.

Convinced he was on the cusp of another sleep-walking episode, I paused. The last thing I wanted was to trigger it.

Once his breathing evened out again, I made a second attempt to get up, but his fingers curled around the jut of my hip bone and anchored me in place.

“Don’t leave.”

“Are you awake?” I whispered.

“I’m awake, Penny. Where are you going?”

I gently detached his grip. “Just to the bathroom. I’ll only be a minute.”

A heavy exhale came through the darkened room as I padded to the en-suite.

In the moment of solitude, I questioned everything: why I was here, what I was trying to prove, how a guy like Dante would fall for a girl like me, how I was going to get through the next few days while being suspended in relationship no man’s land.

I cradled my head in my hands, and sat on the toilet for far longer than I needed to. Spent and exhausted, I simply didn’t have the energy to deal anymore.

Jobless, almost penniless, and crying into my palms while hiding in the bathroom of some swanky hotel I couldn’t afford.

My uncle was my real father. My “father” was a blackmailing son-of-a-bitch. My mother, who I’d misguidedly painted with the adulterer’s brush, had kept her silence for months while I refused to reach out for her side of the story. Add to that Dante’s betrayal…

I broke.

I wept into my hands, trying my hardest to smother every shuddering inhale and distressed sob as it bubbled free. A deep sense of lifelessness settled over me, and I wanted it to take me away. To erase me from this life that suddenly seemed too hard and too complicated.

A soft tap on the bathroom door made me jump.

“Penny? Are you okay in there?”

I sniffed and pressed my palms against my eyes. “I’m fine.”

“I can hear you cryin’, babe. Can I come in?”

“Everything’sfine,Dante.”

When nothing but a sigh, then silence, came from behind the door, I assumed he’d gone back to bed. I numbly forced myself to my feet, flushed and washed my hands, then slid the door open.

A huge, shadowed silhouette filled the door space, and a petrified gasp tangled in my mouth. Planting his arms on the door-frame above his head, Dante blocked my escape. The stance, predator-like, made him appear so much bigger than he already was.

I hesitated between shoving through and not touching him.

One arm dropped through the darkness; the movement nothing but a shadowed blur until it became a physical connection. Fingers landed on my waist and smoothed around my lower back, drawing me in until my chest met his.

“I couldn’t stand another minute without you in bed with me,” he murmured huskily.

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