Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 74214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
With family night in the works, I was sure Dante would be at the garden center to make sure everything was up to par.
I drove there in a bit of a daze, seeing the area a bit differently than I had just two days ago. Suddenly, it felt less bright and new, now full of secrets and hidden darkness.
The lot was surprisingly full, but of cars that didn’t belong to our crew of employees.
As I climbed out of the Jeep, I saw several unfamiliar men hanging about. They were all dressed casually, but there was something tense about their postures, something strange about how their heads seemed perpetually on a pivot.
Weird.
Kind of creepy.
I almost considered going back to my car until I finally spotted a familiar face.
Domenico, standing half-facing me, nodding at something the man with his back to me was saying.
I recognized him even before he turned around.
But as soon as Domenico spotted me, he nodded, and Dante turned, his face softening for a beat before a strange, detached mask overtook his features.
My step faltered, then stopped completely.
Dante was the one who closed the distance, moving away from Domenico to step in front of me.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, babe. How are your hands?” he asked as his gaze inspected my face.
“They’re scabbed over now.” I flashed the angry red but healed scratches at him before balling up my fists.
Because something felt weird here.
Between us, sure, but also around us.
The men? They’d all disappeared. But their cars were still hanging around.
What was happening?
Even the hairs on my arms sensed something was off, and suddenly the ground under my feet felt uneven, off-kilter.
“I, um, have been checking the news,” I said when Dante didn’t say anything. “And there’s been nothing about the murder.”
“Yes. About that,” Dante said, moving to stand next to me, his hand going to my lower back, leading me out of the parking lot as another car pulled in behind us.
“What about it?” I asked, my belly twisting tight, bile climbing up, making me choke it back.
“Well, while I was taking you home, Dom was searching the woods. And, well, he didn’t exactly find a body.”
Even with his hand leading me forward, I froze, my head whipping over to stare at his too-handsome profile.
“What? I saw it. Him. I saw him.” I’d been seeing him behind my eyelids each time I closed my eyes—an image that refused to be erased.
“I know. I didn’t believe him either at first,” Dante said, his tone even and convincing. But why wouldn’t he look at me? “When I got back here, he was waiting, ready to show me what you’d seen in the woods.”
“Who. Who I’d seen in the woods.”
“It certainly looked like a who,” he said, leading me over to a stack of hay bales and sitting down on one.
Feeling like I had no choice, I sat beside him, hating how I was aware of every inch of our bodies that brushed, how I could feel the heat of him through his suit, chasing the chill on my skin and in my bones away.
“Because it was. I saw it. I… touched him with my shoe. He was… squishy. Like a human. Well, like most humans,” I said, glancing at Dante’s strong, hard body.
“I think maybe the low light and the spookiness of the woods made it seem that way. But it wasn’t a person, Hazel.”
His head was turned toward me, his voice was confident, but he still wasn’t looking at me.
“Dante, it was. Is he still there? I’ll show you.” Two days passed; I imagined the smell of decomposition would lead us right to him.
Did my stomach flip at the idea of that? Sure. But I would do whatever it took to find him, to give the man the dignity of being discovered, picked up, and given a proper funeral. There were probably people out there who were looking for him, who missed him, who deserved to know what happened to him—no matter how horrific.
Dante’s hand slapped down on my thigh when I went to stand. It wasn’t a hard touch; he wasn’t holding me in place. But just the feel of his hand on my leg was enough to keep me completely immobilized.
It was insane to be thinking of anything else at a moment like this, but I couldn’t help but notice how big his hand was, how it completely covered my thigh. Or how high his placement was. Just another couple of inches and I could feel those big fingers press between my thigh—
No.
God.
What was wrong with me?
I shook off the thoughts.
But there was no reasoning with the ache deep in my core in response to that line of thinking.
“It’s not there, babe,” Dante said, fingers massaging my thigh. It was beyond distracting.
“Wait. What?”
“When Dom and I looked it over, what seemed like a real person at first turned out to just be a really well-done prop. A movie prop, as it turned out. Once we realized it wasn’t a body, we started calling around. It was one of my cousins. He was trying to fuck with Dom. But he got you by accident.”