She knew her thoughts were not that of a fifteen-year-old, but what she had witnessed had impacted her. She stopped going to the outdoor training sessions after that and started avoiding Dante. She never went to his door again, and now if he came to Vin while she was there, she simply excused herself and left. Her feelings for him were pretty much all over the place.
He had noticed her behavior. One time, she’d heard him corner Vin and ask ‘is Amara ignoring me?’ and she’d run in the opposite direction. One time she’d stumbled upon him playing chess with his brother in the gazebo behind the house and ran away. Not one of her finest moments, she admitted. He’d tried to corner her a few times too over the past year, and she had eluded him every time. She knew she should just tell him it was nothing, but he freaked her out a bit. He didn’t scare her or anything, but he’d become a little more intense over the past year and Amara had become a bit of a worrywart.
“Mumu?” her mother called her from the kitchen, and Amara put down the book she’d been reading, placing her handmade bookmark to mark her page, and walked out of her room.
“Yes, Ma?” she asked, suddenly coming to a halt at seeing a big, big Dante Maroni standing in the space of her small kitchen. He had never, not in all the time she’d harbored her crush on him, come to their little apartment.
Her heart, the traitorous little thing, started to thump extra hard breathing the same air as he was.
Not the time for this.
“Dante wants to talk to you,” her mother informed her, her deep green eyes alight with curiosity and a little apprehension. Amara was certain hers mirrored the same expression. There was no reason for him to want to talk to her, not like this. Not unless he somehow knew that she knew about the body.
Her heart sank.
Oh god.
Swallowing, Amara nodded and indicated the backdoor, silently asking him to talk outside. The backdoor of the staff building opened right to the edge of the woods. No chances of anyone overhearing the conversation out there.
Grabbing the cashmere wrap Vin had gifted her for her birthday a week ago, Amara draped it over her shoulders, pushing her stocking-clad feet into warm boots by the door, and walked out into the bright, cold morning. He followed her, closing the door behind him.
The cool wind blew around her, bringing the scent of the trees and the soil and cologne. Cologne? Amara sniffed softly and realized it was indeed cologne. He was wearing it, the scent woodsy and musky and reminding her of fire crackling over wood and twisted sheets. Yeah, her thoughts weren’t so pure anymore.
Down, girl.
“Mumu?” he asked her, his tone slightly amused, his long legs matching her pace. Though she was tall at five feet eight inches – thanks to a sudden growth spurt that had given her inches and stopped – surprisingly, she only reached his chin.
Amara wrapped her arms around herself, forcing a small smile to cut through the tension in her head. “Yeah, I used to call my mother ma and myself Mu when I was a kid. It stuck.”
Dante nodded. “My brother used to do something similar.”
“I never see him around here anymore,” Amara commented before biting her tongue. She shouldn’t have said that.
“He’s not here. He visits sometimes.”
Leaving it at that, since it wasn’t her place, Amara stopped at the edge of the woods and turned to face him, taking in his form. After that night with the dead body, unless he’d been training shirtless with Vin, Amara had only seen Dante wearing crisp button-down shirts and pants. A heavy metal watch glinted on his strong wrist, his jacket tailored for his body. And the cologne, Not to forget the cologne. She seriously felt underdressed in her plain grey woolen dress and wild hair.
His hair swayed in the gentle breeze as his dark, soulful eyes regarded her steadily.
“Is something going on?” he asked, his voice matching the warm chocolate of his eyes, making her want to cuddle up with a cat and a book. Then, his words penet
rated.
Amara forced herself to hold his gaze as her hands gripped her elbows under the wrap. “What do you mean?”
He quirked a dark eyebrow, thrusting his hands in his pockets. “You’ve been acting weird.”
Amara felt her hackles rise, her brows coming down even as her heart raced. “No offense, Mr. Maroni, but you don’t know me well enough to know how I’m acting.”
Her words had some sort of an effect on him. Amara didn’t know what that was exactly but something cackled between them, something electric, raising the little hairs on the back of her neck and arms with its intensity as she held his haze.
After a long moment of silence, his other eyebrow joined its companion on his forehead. “I just wanted to check if you were okay. I have a feeling you’ve been deliberately avoiding me for some reason for a while now, and I don’t know why. I don’t like it.”
He really shouldn’t have added that last part. Her poor heart started working double-time to keep up. Amara focused on the first part of his sentence. She couldn’t very well say, ‘because I saw you bury the body of a girl I saw you kiss once upon a time’, could she? No.
“You shouldn’t even be noticing that, Mr. Maroni,” she pointed out, her pitch starting to climb again before she leashed it. “I’m of no consequence to you.”
Dante tilted his head to the side, seeing her. Like seeing her, seeing her. Really seeing her. Uh-oh.