Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 169

Dante’s Confession

Sedona’s POV

Dante had suggested the restaurant.

Not asked-suggested, which was how he did most things. He’d said there’s a place on the water I’ve been to before, Thursday if you’re free, and I’d said yes without overthinking it, which I’d been trying to do more of recently. Not overthinking things. Saying yes when yes was available.

The restaurant was small, the kind that didn’t try too hard-wood tables, the water visible through large windows, a menu that was short enough to suggest they did the things on it well rather than many things adequately. It was the middle of a Thursday afternoon, past the lunch rush, and we had a corner table with the view and a reasonable amount of quiet around us.

I’d ordered the salmon, which my mother would have approved of.

Dante had ordered something with fish too

We’d been talking for forty minutes about ordinary things.

The boys-Drew’s bird catalogue had expanded, Lake had apparently provided a field identification that Drew had disputed, and the dispute had been resolved through the consultation of two separate books and the conclusion that Lake had been correct, which Lake had received with great satisfaction and Drew had received with the acknowledgment of someone accepting a result that didn’t entirely please him.

My walks-the route was getting longer, I’d made it past the maple and around the full block now, which Frank had said was good and which felt, on the days, when I did it without thinking about the distance, like something approaching normal,

Nick-I’d told him a little about the calls, the three of them now, each one more settled than the last.

The food came and we ate and the conversation continued and at some point the plates were cleared and the tea arrived and Dante looked at me across the table with the expression that was different and

more serious now.

I knew the difference now. I’d been learning the differences for weeks.

“I want to tell you something,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

He looked at his tea for a moment.

“When I came to the hospital,” he said. “The first time. I want to be honest about why.”

“You said you heard I was there,” I said. “Through the circuit.”

“That’s true,” he said. “But it’s not complete.” He looked up. “I came because I’d been wondering about you

13

Dantes Coolerson

Clas

for years: Since you left the circuit. I asked around for a long time, a couple of years, trying to find out what had happened to you. Nothing turned up. And then I heard through Enzo, after he and Rachel got together, that you’d been found.” He paused. “Not found. That you’d cortie home.”

“Enzo told you?”

“Not specifically. He mentioned it when I saw him at a tournament. Said the Preston family had some good news. I put together enough from that to understand you were back in Seattle.” He looked at the water through the window. “And then when I was in Seattle for the exhibition and I heard you were at St. Anthony’s, I wanted-” He stopped. “I needed to know you were all right. That’s what I told myself. That I just needed to know.”

“And was that true?” I asked.

“Partially,” he said. “It’s true that I needed to know. It’s also true that the needing was more than concern for a former competitor’s wellbeing.” He looked at me directly. “I think you know that.”

I looked at my tea.

I knew that. I’d known it for a while, in the way I’d known things I was choosing not to examine directly. Rachel had said it. Enzo had said it. Cameron had made the kissing noises and I’d told him to stop and he had but his face had kept making the point. My mother had watched Dante across the dinner table one evening with the expression she had when she was thinking something she’d decided not to say yet.

They’d all been saying it for weeks in the ways they chose to say it.

“People have been telling me you like me,” I said.

“I know,” he said..”Rachel told me she’d told you. She mentioned it when she called last week.” He picked up his tea, put it down. “I should be annoyed at the interference but I find I’m mostly just relieved she did, because it means I don’t have to explain from the beginning.”

“You still came to tell me yourself,” I said.

“I didn’t want it to just be Rachel’s information,” he said. “I wanted you to have it from me directly. So you could ask questions if you had them, or tell me something I needed to hear, or-” He paused. “Or just have it, and do with it whatever you need to do.”

I looked at him.

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