For the next three, he and Tristan chased down the lead for her attack.
A week later he went to her.
She glared at him, threw him a pillow, and cried a little. He sat down beside her, and she hit him in the chest. It was the first time she touched him voluntarily before retreating into her blankets.
That was progress.
Months passed.
His hunt for Gilbert wasn’t panning out, but he kept at it. It was disastrous how many people were named Gilbert and without the last name, they were at a loss. The search for him also became a side project as he learned more of the business.
She started homeschooling. She started therapy. She started healing.
She hung out with Vin, occasionally with Tristan, and read romance books.
Every day, he knew a little more about her.
Every day, she saw a little more of him.
Every day, her scars solidified a little more on her skin.
But she didn’t talk to him.
Her mother said she had started to whisper little sentences. Vin told him she’d started to whisper little questions. Even fucking Tristan had said she’d started to whisper little words to him.
But not with Dante.
That fucking bugged him.
Years passed.
She became his person.
He would usually finish his day by going to her house and spending a few hours with her. She listened when he talked and communicated if she had questions. She made him watch movies and indulged him when he just wanted to be.
Sometimes he would see her flinch in the middle of nothing and he wondered if her torture had ever become another kind of violation. But the doctors had said nothing and she said nothing and Dante didn’t know if he should assume just because of the shit in his head.
His father never questioned him about her, but Dante kept him in the loop, saying he was keeping an eye on her. He knew he was being reckless. He knew he was being rebellious again. But he was a grown man and not a boy, and he could keep her safe.
Vin came outright and asked him what his intentions were with her, while Dante demanded he confirm he was nothing but her best friend. He confirmed and Dante was relieved.
The thing between them grew, feeling the sun and the water, feeling the nurture and the affection. They began to feel more like magnets than puzzle pieces, finding their way to each other, close but not close enough, as the tension between them built and built and built.
She became his person.
She became his.
Did he possibly have a girlfriend?
Amara didn’t know why it jolted her out of her reverie, but it did. As she watched him lead the beautiful woman across the floor in a dance, Amara realized she’d somehow fallen into the safety of the time he spent with her.
Over the last year, Dante had become something like the sun. She waited every day to feel his warmth, if only just for a few minutes before the clouds returned. But as long as she had the sun, the clouds were bearable.
She didn’t know what she felt for him anymore, everything inside her convoluted in the way he’d been weaved into her life. But she did know that he’d become important to her, very important. And watching him dance closely with a pretty woman? It kinda hurt.
Okay, it really hurt.
But it made sense. He was older and more mature and needed someone who could compliment that. And it wasn’t a traumatized seventeen-year-old girl in therapy who never spoke a word to him. While she had begun speaking to a few people, she didn’t to him. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to. She did. But god, she hated her new voice. And she really, really didn’t want him to hate it.