Page 96 of Waste of Worth

“I’m at the restaurant and you’re not here. You’re on the schedule, Karen.”

He sounded like an asshole.

Dino tried to check that impulse and put it in place, but he wasn’t sure it was going to do any good. Especially not after what she said next.

“I quit, so no, I don’t need to be there at all.”

“You quit.”

It didn’t even come out as a question.

Karen sighed. “Yeah—I’m done.”

“Karen …” Dino took a breath, thinking hard on what he wanted to say next because he knew it was going to be important. It was going to mean the difference between her never wanting to see him again, and him being able to explain himself in a way that she might understand. “Give me ten minutes, please.”

“For what, Dino?” she asked softly. “For you to walk out on me again? For you to leave me trying to figure out a shitty situation by myself again? I would rather do this alone than be with someone who makes me feel like I’m doing it alone. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Yes.

He absolutely did.

“I don’t want you to do it alone,” Dino said. “I’m sorry that I was a fucking asshole last week. I could say you took me by surprise and I didn’t know how to react, so what you got was just a really bad reaction, but it would only be half of the truth.”

“Listen—”

“No, let me finish. I’ve had the shittiest week in a long time, although I am sure yours has been worse than mine. I don’t know what to do, but if you just let me explain it, maybe you’d understand why.”

Dino had fully intended to keep Karen out of his business as far as the Outfit and his family went. He didn’t want to put her in a position where Ben might be able to use her to hurt Dino in some way, or God forbid, as another one of his lessons.

But if it would make her understand why he kept her at a distance, if explaining to her how his fears were like a constant noose tightening around his neck every single day of his life, then he would do it.

He didn’t know what would come after.

He wasn’t sure that those details mattered at the moment.

“Ten minutes,” Dino said almost pleadingly. “Please give me ten minutes with you to explain. I love you—that should be enough for ten minutes.”

He’d said the words so easily that time.

Easy, he knew, because he meant them and he didn’t say things he didn’t mean.

Karen hesitated on the other end of the call. “Fine. But that’s all you get. Come over to my place now, and I’ll give you ten minutes.”

Dino was more than willing to agree to that, and with a quick goodbye, he was already heading out of his office.

He prided himself on the fact that he was not a stupid man. Truth be told, Karen was not a stupid woman, either. She was more than capable of handling herself, and taking care of her own business.

She didn’t need him.

She had taken care of herself long before he’d ever come along. She never accepted help from him beyond the job he gave her. He offered to help pay for bills when she came up short from time to time because he had more money than he knew what to do with, but Karen refused because she didn’t need him to do anything.

Dino took comfort in the fact that his lover was able to keep her head above water and her feet on the ground, but he also knew what that really meant.

If she wanted to walk away from him, if she had finally had enough, she could do so.

She was not dependent on him.

Dino was only starting to realize now that it was him who was dependent on her in more ways than he cared to count. She made him happy, gave him peace. She made him smile, gave him happiness. She was light in the darkness that constantly clouded his life, and he had come to rely on her to keep shining around him when everything else seemed so dull.