Page 61 of Waste of Worth

“Not now.”

“Oh,” Karen whispered, her back still turned to him. “It didn’t really sound like nothing, though.”

Dino wished his throat didn’t feel so goddamn tight. He wished he had the right words to fend off Karen’s questions without his asshole nature showing itself again. He wished he was better at this whole thing.

For her, he wished he was just better.

“She was someone that wasn’t given to me, so she was taken away,” Dino said.

He didn’t need to peer down at Karen’s profile to know she was probably confused as hell over his vague explanation of Julia Trentini.

It was the best he could offer.

It was the only thing that had ever been explained to him, after all.

Then, almost too quiet for Dino to hear, Karen asked, “Well, did you love her?”

His answer was immediate and honest. “No.”

He certainly cared for Julia, but he hadn’t the first clue what something like love even felt like back then, let alone now. He was sure, had he been given the chance, he would have learned what love was with her, but that wasn’t the case.

Still, he’d heard that hesitance in Karen’s question.

Like she’d expected a different answer from him, one that might explain his behaviors and oddities away.

He heard her fear.

And then he heard it again.

“Are you sure?” Karen pressed on.

“Karen.”

She didn’t turn in the bed, never mind responding with words.

Dino stared down at her through the darkness, wondering why she had that hitch in her words, or why she would feel like she would need to ask him that at all. Or follow it up by asking again.

“Karen,” Dino said a second time, firmer.

Sighing, she turned to her back, her gaze drawn down. “What?”

That fear he heard in her voice—he knew what it was.

Somewhere inside, he understood she was worried that he wasn’t all here with her because he was scattered somewhere else with someone that wasn’t her.

He got that.

“I’m here,” he told her.

Karen’s gaze didn’t lift to seek his out, she stayed like she was, stiff like a board beside him with her arms crossed under the blankets. “I’m aware you’re here, Dino.”

“Are you?”

“I know what you mean, okay. Let’s go to bed. It’s late.”

No, not now.

He definitely wasn’t going to let her sleep now.