AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He laughed. “I sound like everyone else around here, but I’ve never heard an accent like yours. Where did you grow up?”
“California.”
“What parts?”
She hesitated. “The desert.”
He nodded. “No wonder I’ve never heard it. You’re the first native Californian I’ve met. You were born there, right?”
She nodded, his line of questioning baffling her.
“Well, Haven, since I was wrong and you can go out by yourself, you should come visit me sometime.”
Her eyes narrowed at the invitation. “Why are you interested?”
“You seem like a nice girl,” he said. “There’s no harm in us being friends.”
“Do you want to be friends because you want to get to know me, or do you want to be friends because it’ll upset Carmine? Because I can’t be friends with someone who wants to hurt him.”
ped his eyes with the back of his hand, brushing away the tears as he sat quietly, savoring the silence. Seeing her name, something tangible to remind him she had been real, soothed his frazzled nerves, and for the moment, he almost felt at peace.
After a few minutes, he stood and brushed the grass off of his pants. “I won’t stay gone so long next time. I love you.”
He walked away, heading across the cemetery to his car. The tears came to a stop, his heart growing numb on the drive back to Chicago.
By the time he crossed into the city limits, he felt cold again.
32
Haven stood in the doorway to the bedroom, quietly watching Carmine as he did his homework. He sat at his desk with his head in the palm of his left hand, staring intently at a laptop. He hadn’t sensed her presence, or if he did, he chose not to acknowledge her.
Carmine groaned. “What does the Greek alphabet have to do with math?”
She blurted out the answer. “Pi?”
He jumped at the sound of her voice and swung around. “Did you just ask if I wanted pie?”
“No, Pi is a part of the Greek alphabet, and it’s also a math, uh, thingy.”
He stared at her for a moment before what she said registered. “Well, thank Alex Trebek for that. You could probably do my damn work and save me a lot of aggravation, you know.”
She blushed. “But if I did it, how would you learn?”
“I don’t see myself ever needing to know this shit,” he said, shaking his head. “Anyway, is there something you needed?”
“I’m supposed to go to Dia’s, remember?”
She wasn’t sure how he’d forgotten, since it was his idea in the first place. “Oh, yeah, right.” He grabbed his keys off his desk. She expected him to stand so they could leave, but instead he held them out to her.
She stared at the keys. “Aren’t you going to drive me?”
“You know how to drive,” he said, jingling them. “I don’t have time to play taxi, tesoro. I have a ton of homework to get done and errands to run.”
Her brow furrowed. “How will you run errands if you don’t have your car?”
“I’m going with Dom,” he said. “You remember how to get to Dia’s, right? It’s a straight shot. I dropped you off there when you got your dress.”
“Uh, yes, but . . .”
