Page 38 of Worth of Waste

“Don’t make promises you might not keep, Dino.”

Ouch.

She did have a point.

In a way.

“I’m trying,” Dino said.

“Trying to do what?”

Dino shook his head, not entirely sure just yet. “I don’t know—something, Karen. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet, but I do know it’s for you and him. For me, too. I just don’t know what it is.”

“Be happy, Dino.”

He blinked. “What?”

Karen leaned up, staring him straight in the eye and leaning forward enough to press a quick and fleeting kiss to his lax lips. “Be happy. That’s what you should do—whatever makes you happy.”

She made him happy.

She had always done that for him.

Dino just didn’t know how to keep that happiness without someone like Ben DeLuca coming along to take it from him. It was always taken from him at some point.

“Da.”

Dino’s gaze broke from Karen’s, flying to the boy standing just a foot away. The one-year-old stood in his black lace-up boots, looking like he might topple over at any moment. Still, the baby stood there, staring Dino in the face with a curious expression and his little hand pointing right at him.

“Da,” J repeated.

Dino swallowed hard, unsure in his heart.

“I have some pictures,” Karen explained. “I showed him—he knows.”

“Da,” J said firmly.

And then he took a step—one hesitant and wobbly, nearly falling over at the same time but managing to get his foot out from under himself to move another step.

His little hands slapped against Dino’s knees, and J looked up at him with wide eyes and an even bigger smile.

“Da!”

“Yeah, I’m your dad, little man.”

J’s smile grew even bigger.

“Well, you didn’t miss that, I suppose,” Karen said, a hint of a smile in her voice.

“What’s that?” Dino asked absently, his attention captured by the smiling child that reminded him of innocence and life.

“His first steps. And he walked for you—imagine that.”

Karen

“HE wants you to pick him up.”

Dino looked like Karen’s statement was the scariest thing he had ever heard. “What?”