Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 54572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 218(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 218(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
The driver chatted about traffic. About how the city never slept. I nodded at the right times, smiled when appropriate. I did what I always did—performed normalcy like it was muscle memory.
My building came into view. The driver stopped, I exited, grabbed my bags, and began the way up to my place. When I finally stepped into my apartment, the quiet hit hard.
Not the peaceful kind.
The empty kind.
I dropped my bags by the door, kicked off my shoes, and stood there for a long second staring at my living room. Everything exactly where I left it. Clean. Orderly. Controlled.
My life.
I had built it with both hands. Brick by brick after grief had tried to bury me. After people I loved had been taken from this world too soon and I learned the lesson the universe kept drilling into my bones—no one gets to stay.
I went straight to my bedroom and stripped out of travel clothes, tossing them into the hamper. My robe from the hotel was still folded in my suitcase, and the sight of it made my chest twist. I slammed the suitcase shut. I could unpack tomorrow.
Shower. Hot water. Scrub North Carolina off my skin.
Except I couldn’t scrub him off.
My mind betrayed me the second I stepped under the spray, heat warming its way down my shoulders. My body relaxed, and with it came memories like they had been waiting behind a door.
His weight. His mouth. The way he’d looked at me in the morning, like he wanted to say a thousand things and didn’t trust himself not to share too much.
I pressed my palm against the tile wall, eyes squeezed shut. Don’t go there Nita, I told myself.
I wasn’t twenty-five. I wasn’t naive. I wasn’t interested in a romance that ran on chaos and impulse.
One night. One detour. It was done.
When I got out, I checked my phone. Three missed calls.
All North Carolina.
A text from him, this time the number was not concealed.
Dante: You made it?
I stared at the message until the letters blurred. My thumb hovered over the keyboard.
A simple yes would be harmless. That was the lie my brain offered.
Because nothing with Dante was harmless. Not now. Not ever. Not when he kissed me like he had been waiting years for permission to breathe again.
I set the phone face down on the counter.
My reflection in the mirror looked too awake. Eyes too bright. Mouth too full like it had been kissed into remembering what it could feel.
I leaned closer and whispered, “Get it together,” like I was talking to a suspect.
Then I went to work. Not physically—my next shift wasn’t until tomorrow—but mentally. I opened my laptop, checked emails, flagged the urgent ones, answered two that couldn’t wait. I pulled up the briefing folder I had been ignoring all week because North Carolina had hijacked my brain.
By the time evening settled, I had almost managed to push him back into the compartment I had built for him.
Almost.
My phone rang again as I reheated leftovers.
I didn’t check the screen this time. I knew. My body knew. My heartbeat told me before my brain could pretend otherwise.
It rang until voicemail.
Then it rang again ten minutes later.
And again.
I ate standing at the counter, chewing without tasting, eyes fixed on the microwave clock like it was the only thing keeping me anchored. I wasn’t ignoring him because I didn’t want to answer.
That was the part that scared me.
I was ignoring him because I did want to answer. I craved this simple connection to him. Because one conversation would turn into two. Because two would turn into late-night calls. Because Dante didn’t do anything halfway, and neither did I when I stopped pretending.
And I refused to let my life become a waiting room. I had done enough waiting in my lifetime.
Waiting for justice that didn’t come fast enough. Waiting for men to be who they promised they could be. Waiting for the next shoe to drop.
I wasn’t waiting anymore.
My phone buzzed on the counter. A new text.
Dante: Nita. Don’t do this.
I exhaled slowly, heat rising in my chest. My mind ran amuck with different thoughts. Don’t do what? Protect myself? Keep my boundaries? Refuse to let you rewrite the rules because you’re lonely and I’m convenient?
I stared at the message and felt that familiar tug, anger braided with something softer. Something dangerous. Something that felt really like care.
My fingers typed before I fully committed to the choice.
Then I deleted the words. Typed again.
Deleted again. Because anything I said would invite more.
And the truth was simple, even if it wasn’t easy. I didn’t want the complications of a relationship.
Not with him. Not with anyone who could make one night feel like a life-altering event.
I rinsed my plate and put it in the dishwasher with unnecessary force. Then I picked up my phone, opened his contact—yes, I still had it saved—and hovered over the block button.