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By the time Dante recovered from his third orgasm in just about twelve hours, it was after nine on Saturday morning.
“Shit,” he muttered after seeing the time. “I have to pick up Daniella.”
“Mm,” André murmured.
Dante glanced at his—at André. He had one arm thrown over his face so Dante couldn’t read his expression. Dante wasn’t sure why, but the arm over the face bothered him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time this morning to try and solve the puzzle box that was André Dear. He doubted he could do it in a day anyway. Heaving himself out of bed for the second time that day, he relocated the clothes he’d been wearing last night and put them back on.
“Do you think Daniella will notice these are the same clothes I was wearing when I dropped her off?” he asked, looking down at his rumpled shirt and jeans.
André moved his arm away from his eyes to take in Dante’s apparel. “She’s fifteen?”
Dante nodded.
“Yep.”
“Damn. I’ll just tell her I overslept.”
Dante rarely overslept but Daniella didn’t know that.
“I’m sure that’ll work.”
André’s moodhadchanged, but Dante didn’t have the time to analyze why. He couldn’t be late picking up Daniella. He’d gotten stuck in traffic once when they’d first moved to Cooper Springs and had been five minutes behind schedule. By the time he arrived at the high school, Daniella had almost been in tears. The grief counselor she was seeing in Aberdeen seemed to be good at her job, but the situation was not helped by the fact that Dani couldn’t be open about her mourning. Not even the counselor knew her mother had been murdered, not killed in a car accident.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, patting himself to make sure he had his wallet and cell phone. Check to both. The sense of calm he’d woken up with? That had evaporated.
André slipped off the bed, reaching down to drag on the gray sweatpants he’d been wearing earlier. Dante had a weakness for men in sweatpants—hell, he had a weakness for André. The sweatshirt Dante had borrowed for a few minutes lay on the floor. Picking it up, André tossed it in a dirty clothes hamper near the closet. Dante felt a stab of disappointment; he’d hoped André would wear it.
Yes, he was possessive.
“There’s an Elma-Cooper Springs makeup game tonight,” André said. “The department will be busy. Who knew small-town football would be such an issue?”
“Oh, come on, even I know small towns live and breathe their home teams. Daniella’s been talking about it,” he said as he left André’s bedroom and headed down the hall toward the front door. “I’m pretty sure even she wants to go.”
“It’s bound to be a good one,” André said matter-of-factly. “Well,” he added after a second, “entertaining anyway.”
Dante opened the door, his gut telling him they should be talking about something other than high school football, but for the life of him, he didn’t know how to bridge the gap. Somehow they’d gone from great sex to casual-friend conversation, and he didn’t know how to get to where he really wanted to be. Which was in André’s bed. Permanently.
He stepped out onto the small porch and the door shut softly behind him. André did not say goodbye.
“Dammit.”
But he didn’t have time to worry about André. He needed to pick up Daniella.
* * *
Several weeks passed relatively drama free—drama, Dante was quickly learning, was an integral part of teenager life. And, even though he wanted to, Dante had not stopped by André’s again. The want was there and almost painful. Like those commercials where kids stared in a window at all the toys they wanted but couldn’t have. He’d realized he needed to be subtle in his approach to André. He needed to court the sexy police chief instead of showing up uninvited and making him feel like all Dante wanted was sex.
He definitely wanted sex too, but he also wanted the rest of André Dear.
More recently, the shit in Cooper Springs had hit the fan and Dante figured André wouldn’t be amenable to him stopping by. The body of a local, Lizzy Harlow, had been discovered on the town’s beach by a realtor and, of all people, Romy Barone’s dad. Technically, she had been found by Xavier Stone’s dog, but that was semantics.
The Thanksgiving holiday had come and gone as well—and good fucking riddance too. He and Daniella had spent it together, just the two of them in the crappy rental house with the heinous floral couch. Daniella had laughed at Dante’s attempt to make homemade gnocchi for their dinner. Not for the first time, he’d wished his grandmother was still alive so he could watch her competent hands form the potato flour-based pasta. His gnocchi looked like a science experiment gone very wrong.
He’d make bad gnocchi for the rest of his life if it made his niece laugh. And at least it had been edible.
Dante sighed, trying not to think about the fucking Christmas holiday that loomed ahead. Winter vacation had started that day, which meant two weeks of Daniella at home, missing her mom and her friends from her old life.
While Daniella was in school, Dante spent most of his time tracking down any information he could about The Fucking Murderer, Aldo Campos, and his equally heinous brother, Alonso. But, with his niece at home for the rest of the year, he would be forced to abandon the search until after New Year’s. Not that he was having much success anyway.
