Call Me Crazy (Bellamy Creek #3) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,93
I simply said we were taking some time and space. When my friends checked in with me, I said I was fine, but I wasn’t—and lying to them only made me feel worse. I could still hear my mother calling me a dishonest man, and I hated it. When I lay in bed at night, struggling to fall asleep, all I could think about was her body, her lips, the way she’d sigh when I buried myself inside her.
I missed her. I fucking missed her like I’d never missed anyone. Only one week had gone by without seeing her, hearing her, touching her, but I felt like I was losing my mind. And every time I thought about her crying as she moved out, I wanted to put my fist through a wall.
If she didn’t want to go, why had she gone?
Saturday, a few Moretti construction guys came over to the new house to help me with plumbing and electrical, and JJ DeRossi was one of them. I waited until he was alone in the kitchen, installing some recessed lights in the old plaster ceiling, before casually asking him how Bianca was.
At least, I tried to sound casual. Inside, I was desperate for any information about her.
“She’s good,” JJ said. “Hey, can you hand me that oscillating tool?”
Good? That’s all I was going to get?
I tried again after handing him the tool. “Has she, uh, mentioned me at all?”
“Nope. Not really.” He began to cut a circle into the plaster, and I waited until he was done and the noise stopped.
“What’s she been doing?”
“She works a lot, and then she goes out at night.”
“She does?” Surprised, I adjusted my cap and crossed my arms over my chest. “Huh. I didn’t think she went out much at night, especially work nights. Usually she just likes to read or watch TV.”
“Yeah, she’s been out pretty much every night.”
“With who?”
“Friends, I guess. I haven’t really gotten a chance to ask her because she gets home so late.”
I frowned. “How late?”
“I dunno. Two or three maybe.”
My arms came undone. “In the morning?”
“Yeah. Like after the bars close.”
Furious with myself for asking, and with Bianca for apparently handling our breakup much better than I was—and with any guy out there who’d see her out and about and assume he could flirt with my fucking wife—I left the kitchen and walked around the house, looking for a project that would require the use of a sledgehammer.
The whole rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about what JJ had said. Was she really as happy as he made it sound? Was she seriously going out every night until two in the morning, closing down bars? It did not sound like the Bianca I knew at all. Nor did it sound like the Bianca that Blair had described, the one who was “not okay.”
I stayed late at the house, working by myself, growing more agitated every hour. By the time I got home and took a shower, I was nearly unhinged.
I had to see her.
After hanging up my towel, I turned back to the mirror and studied my reflection. Once upon a time, the Moretti smolder had been a force to be reckoned with. Did I still have it? After all, I was getting older. A couple grays were creeping into my dark hair. Lines had begun to etch themselves faintly into my forehead, and all the frowning I’d been doing lately wasn’t helping. I tried to relax the muscles in my face, glad when the lines mostly disappeared.
Turning sideways, I double-checked that I wasn’t developing a big gut, then I faced the glass again and attempted my signature expression, the one I’d been using for almost twenty years to charm my way into or out of any situation. I lowered my lids a little—not too much, because the eyes were the most important factor in the smolder—and arranged my mouth into that slightly crooked half-smile, half-smirk women could not seem to resist. I tilted my head. I tousled my hair. I cocked one eyebrow just enough to suggest an invitation.
Oh yeah. I still had it.
Now I just needed an excuse to see her so I could use it.
I couldn’t just show up on her doorstep like a sad, lonely puppy—I needed a reason to go there. An excuse. I didn’t want her to know how badly I missed her, how much I cared, how hurt I was that she’d gone, how lost I felt without her.