Page 25 of Waste of Worth

Certainly not interesting.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Karen said quietly. “I went back to your mother’s grave for a couple of weeks after you stopped coming on Sundays—just to say hello to her, and wipe down the stone. I figured if you had done it for so long, maybe it was difficult for you to just up and stop simply because you had to in order to avoid me.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Are we going back to that again?”

Dino let out a laugh at her pointed glare. She was right, and rightly called him out on the lie. But the laugh … that was what surprised him the most. It was genuine, and deep. It almost made his stomach ache, though it didn’t last long and was over before he realized.

Sad thing was, it was not the first time or even the second time that she had made him laugh without even trying.

It was all a little surreal.

Who was this woman?

Why her, he found himself wondering.

“Dino,” Karen whispered, drawing him from his thoughts.

It was something else a little strange about her—he always found he liked being outside of his head when he was with her, rather than inside where he could ignore the world, even if his mind was full of terrible things.

“Yeah?” he asked, watching her more intently than before.

“You’ve been staring at my mouth for the last five minutes.”

Had he?

Well, she had been talking.

It certainly wasn’t because a part of his mind wondered what her lips felt like, and another part of his brain was curious what she tasted like and how she kissed.

Dino had spent so long keeping his emotions shut off from the rest of the world, because it was easier to deal with life when he didn’t have the complication of feeling to go along with it, and he didn’t quite know how to discern the things he felt now. Making sure he never got involved with people meant he didn’t need to put forth a great deal of effort to understand them or why they did the things they did.

Karen made him want to know all of those things, especially why she made him want it.

It felt like he was playing with fire.

She was right.

He was a little strange.

“Dino,” Karen said, laughing low.

“Just ask, right?”

Karen nodded, her grin deepening. “Right.”

He was caught staring at her mouth again, and how her lips curved upwards at the edges whenever she glanced his way.

Just ask.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he admitted.

“I didn’t hear a question there.”

“It’s self-explanatory.”

“I did say coffee was a possibility,” Karen mused.