Page 33 of Out of the Shadow

We remain locked together for a long while. Wrapped in King’s arms, I’m safe. Warm. Calm. It almost feels like I belong here.

No, wait. This isn’t right.

His arms are too muscular, his frame is too tall. His body is too healthy, almost offensively so. I stumble backward.

He reaches out for me again, and I take another step backward, my head shaking.

He runs his hand across the stubble on his face. “How about we return to our table?”

I nod, refusing to look into his eyes. I’ll do anything to get away from this spot. From him. He guides us back to the table. Once I’m settled, he sits across from me. I take my first deep breath.

“Here, drink your soda. It should help calm your stomach.”

Not processing his words, I take a sip, then push the cup forward.

“Did something you ate disagree with you?”

And there it is. My laugh fills the area, before I shove a hand in front of my wayward mouth.

“I take it that was a ‘no’?”

I shake my head. King bared his soul to me, and maybe he deserves to know the truth about Dante. It’s strange that I haven’t told him, I know that—I’ve avoided it without quite knowing why.

“No.” My word comes out as a croak, so I take another drink of my soda and try again. “It wasn’t what I ate.” I inhale and my tattoo dances in the sunlight. It’s time for me to come clean. I hold up the inside of my wrist to him.

King squints. “Dante?”

“Yes, Dante.” I trace the word with my fingernail then let both of my hands rest on my lap. “Dante was my husband. He died ten years ago, when we were both twenty.”

He was reaching for his water, and his hand stops mid-reach. “I am so sorry.”

A smile flicks across my face. “Dante and I were inseparable, ever since my family moved in next door to him when I was thirteen. He taught me how to play stickball, and I taught him math. We started dating as soon as we got to the point when the opposite sex no longer had cooties.”

“Wow.”

That’s all he says. No condescending remarks, no judgment. Because of that, I go on. “We were so in love and everyone assumed we’d get married someday. He’d join his father’s finance business and I’d help him with the office. We’d have lots of babies and be happy.”

I stop talking, but King doesn’t say a word. He just waits for me to continue my story. I inhale. “Dante was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma right after our Junior Prom.” At his perplexed look, I explain, “It’s a rare type of cancer that forms in bone or soft tissue. For Dante, it started in his femur.” I place my hand on top of my thigh. “The first sign was when the bone broke for no apparent reason. The cancer quickly spread to the marrow.” I turn my head and look into the ocean.

“Anyway, when he was told it was terminal, he asked me to marry him because we were so in love.”

A tear escapes, followed by several more. I swipe them off my cheeks and finish up my story. “We created a Bucket List of things we’d do if we had the next fifty years to live together.”

“Was becoming a real estate broker part of the plan?”

I wrap the ends of my ponytail around my finger. “He wasn’t really interested in finance, and I’d always found real estate exciting, so we decided that we’d run an agency together instead. The last item on our Bucket List was to become the Number One real estate agency in the Hamptons.”

“That’s where Poppy comes into the story.”

I hiccup. “Yeah. She’s such a bitch.”

He smiles, the crinkles at the corner of his eyes reaching inside of me. Silence hangs between us for a while, but I’m surprised by how comfortable it feels. He looks around the beach. “And how does this place play into your story?”

Bile rises in my throat again, but I swallow and take a deep breath. “We were married here. We spent our honeymoon here. We thought this was the most magical place on earth, and never wanted to leave. And”—another breath, more tears—“we held his memorial service here after…”

King looks stricken. He stands up, and I follow his progress as he walks around the table and straddles the bench I’m sitting on. He pulls me into a hug, resting his chin on top of my head. “I’m so sorry, Angie. I had no idea about any of this.”

I wrap my arms around his torso. “How could you have known?” My words are muffled against his chest.

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