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But it isn’t my father. At least, it isn’t his cell phone or land line number, but it is a local one to my home town. I recognize that even if I don’t directly know who it belongs to. I debate answering in case it’s the media, but to be honest I can’t imagine why it would be the local press. They have all the details of the case, don’t they? They have more than anyone else, so there isn’t any reason for them to call me right now.
It could be someone who knows me, who gives a shit about me, who I could really talk to…
“Hello?” There is a strange sound on the other end of the phone. I don’t know what to make of it. “Hello?”
“Millie, is that you?” Oh my God, I freeze in a state of panic. This is a voice that I haven’t heard in a long time, and that I honestly didn’t want to hear again. Could this day get any worse? “It’s Dante.”
“D… Dante?” I gasp out while sinking to my knees. Luckily, he can’t see me because I really wouldn’t want him to know that he can still have this kind of effect on me. “Why are you calling me?”
My stomach twists up in knots. It’s been too long. Before the car crash, before he was arrested. I saw him in court, but I didn’t speak to him. I don’t even know what to say to him right now. Perhaps if he had given me time to prepare then I… well, I wouldn’t have picked up if I knew that this was him. I wanted to avoid my past coming back to haunt me, but now ever part of it is back in my life in the worst way possible.
“I thought that after today you might want someone to talk to. It hasn’t been the easiest, has it?”
“What do you mean?” There is no way that Dante can have seen what was online.
“The news stories, the Internet… I might be locked up, but I do know what’s going on out there when it involves me. You’re dating someone, aren’t you? Someone in LA and it’s caused a media storm…”
I don’t like Dante knowing where I am. Even with him in jail and no chance of getting out any time soon, it scares me. Just because I have spent such a long time being terrified of him. That isn’t a feeling to go away quickly. Especially with it all dredged up like this. I might as well be back under his control, waiting for the next time that things go awry, and I end up with bruises all over my body.
The only thing that’s different, and it’s another thing that has me all worked up, is the rational straight-laced tone to Dante’s voice. I suppose he will have had to straighten up in jail, you can’t get drugs while locked up I wouldn’t imagine, so his craziness must have subsided somewhat. It’s still very disconcerting though.
“Anyway, I’m sure that you’ll be wanting to escape it all and I know that the only place you feel safe is with your father.” I shudder. That man knows far too much about me. Why did I share myself so openly with him before I knew that I could? Well, I suppose because I was a naïve eighteen-year-old in love in the beginning… “So, if you are leaving LA to come back for a bit, I was wondering if you would come and see me.”
“In… in jail?” I gulp, trying to swallow down the terror but it isn’t going anywhere.
“Yes. I know that might be a lot for you, but since it’s all up in the air again anyway, it seems like the best time to me. Me and you still have a lot to talk about, don’t we? I think it’s time at last…”
What the fuck is this day? I wake up in Lance’s bed, alone and on cloud nine, convinced that everything is going to be perfect from here on out because I took a chance… and now I’m talking to Dante about possibly going to see him in prison because we have ‘things to talk about’. I honestly don’t know what’s going on anymore. I think I might be losing my mind. Everything is jumbled up, nothing is where I want it to be, where it should be. I can’t even begin to imagine what all of this means, much less what I need to do next…Chapter 13 – Lance“She still isn’t back at work?” I ask the bar tender in The Scarlet Longue, starting to feel that sense of hopelessness crushing me now. “But it’s been three days. This isn’t like Millie at all. I don’t know what to do.”
Of course, the guy working behind the bar in Millie’s place doesn’t care. He does the only thing he can and gives me a one shouldered shrug combined with a very blank expression. “Don’t know what to tell you.”
