Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(32)

Without another word, he left.

I sat heavily on the bed, staring fixedly at the tiny thing.

I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, but one thing was for sure—I’d never be letting Dante’s mother have it, not if I got to have a say.

If for no other reason than pure spite, I’d keep it at least from her.

I began to unpack, hanging the few clothes I’d brought in the near empty closet.

I knew Dante had meant it literally about his mother ransacking the place, that even my luggage wasn’t safe from her grasping hands.

Luckily I’d packed a bit of jewelry for the trip. I found a small gold chain that ironically, but not surprisingly, Gram had given me, looped the object through it, and strung the thing around my neck, tucking it into my cleavage. The dress I was wearing would cover even the chain.

I hid the box in one of my shoes. If his mother found that much, it wouldn’t be good, but at least all she’d be getting was an empty box.

I began getting ready for the funeral almost right away. Nothing made a girl want to look her best more than facing a room full of her most despised enemies.

I spent nearly an hour on makeup, going full out—smoky eyes, red lips, the works. I looked my best when polished to killing sharpness.

My hair was easier. I left it down. It was long and thick, a wavy, streaky brown mane down my back that needed only a bit of taming to look like I’d just come from a rather graceful tumble between the sheets, which suited me just fine.

I wore a form fitting black dress with a high collar. It was polyester made to look like silk, and it almost succeeded. What the dress did succeed in was accentuating every single one of my outrageous curves, the skirt hitting just above my knees.

I wore the red Louboutins Dante had given me (damn him) though it had been a struggle with myself to do so.

It was a testament to how much I hated the other people that would be attending the funeral that I’d let Dante see I hadn’t thrown them away, to let him see me wearing a gift he’d given me.

But desperate times called for desperate measures, and nothing made me feel more confident than a killer pair of shoes.





CHAPTER





SIXTEEN





“Jealousy is always born with love but it does not die with it.”

~Francois de La Rochefoucauld





PAST


When the teenage years hit, what Dante and I had just sort of turned, shifted a bit. It was an unspoken rule that we belonged to each other in a new and more possessive way.

We just made sense. Something naive inside of me couldn’t imagine anything else.

Neither of us could have tolerated someone soft.

I’d chew up and spit out a soft boy, a fact I’d since then proven many times.

Dante would eat a soft girl for breakfast.

We fit together, and it wasn’t until I was nearly fourteen that it even occurred to me that anyone or anything could come between us.

We were at Dante’s house, which was rare. His mother didn’t work, and she hardly ever went anywhere, so being at his house was pretty much a guarantee of running into her, not to mention the fact that my grandma worked there and she’d kill me if she knew how much time I spent with Dante and that we were close enough he’d bring me to his home.

Dante had forgotten his backpack, though, and he was just running upstairs real quick to grab it.

He wasn’t quick enough.

His mother terrified me, but she was the kind of woman where you knew you shouldn’t let her see it.

But some things you just couldn’t hide.

I tried my best, but she was a shark and I was perpetually bleeding. There was no way she didn’t notice.

Usually I had a tough skin. I liked to think I had a tough everything, but I did have one weakness.

One. In my entire child/woman body, and we both knew it.

Dante. He was the chink in my armor. My soft underbelly.

She didn’t single me out often, but every time she did, it was memorable.

And terrible.

I’d grown several inches over the summer and I was awkward with it. Most of my clothes were ill-fitting. Gram helped some with it, well, she helped what little Grandma would let her. She wasn’t allowed to buy me anything nice or even anything new, but Gram still took an interest, making sure I went shopping a few times a year for the basics on consignment, but even she couldn’t keep up with how my body was growing.

I’d always been rail thin, skinny looking to the point of unhealthy, but all of a sudden, I had sprouted, and as I’d gone up, parts of me had started to grow out.

My legs had grown longer than was proportionate with my body, and I did not own one pair of pants that made it to my ankles, or one set of shorts that weren’t embarrassingly high, exposing way more of my upper thighs and butt than I was comfortable with. And nothing in the world fit comfortably over my shapely hips.

My shirts were too tight, my dresses small to the point of obscene, and on top of all of that, I kept having growth spurts, so I felt less coordinated by the day.

And my breasts—which were the bane of my existence, had grown too large to hide.

I couldn’t talk to a boy and have him look me in the eye anymore.

Except for Dante. He was good at being my exception.

Even when he pissed me off, he rarely disappointed me.