Read Online Find Me in the Dark by Karina Ashe - Free Book Online Page B

losing my only connection to you, at least up until recently.
    I didn’t want to write to you today. I thought doing so would trivialize that moment between us, and I didn’t want to do that. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake thinking of you. I thought of you next to me. I wanted to go to your home and climbing into your room and lay down beside you. To remove my mask and touch your lips with mine. To be as naked before you as you were with me.
    But I couldn’t do those things, and so I knew I had to write. You’d think I’d abandoned you if I didn’t. That it wasn’t important to me. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It doesn’t matter what happens in the future. I will cherish last night always.
    When I finally walk back up to the room, Dolly is making pancakes in the kitchen.
    “What’s going on?” I yawn as I enter. My slippers scuff the floor until I trip over a shirt. “God, Cassie needs to clean her shit up.”
    “Yeah, she does. I don’t know how we put up with her.” Dolly plops a plate of pancakes on the table. “Here.”
    I scowl. “What’s the occasion?”
    Her eyes soften as she watches me wince as I sit. “You’re probably sore, and deserve something sweet. David would have made you pancakes, you know.”
    “What?” Why was she talking about David again?
    “Nothing.” She smiles a little bit to herself. “I’m just saying you deserve to wake up next to a guy who’ll make you pancakes.”
    I feel myself blushing. Can’t help it. The image of masked man making me pancakes is silly and…makes me feel warm for some reason. I’m not comfortable with this feeling.
    I grab the plate and cut off a piece of buttery sugary goodness with my fork.
    “Well, at least it was good, right?” Dolly probs.
    I stuff that piece of buttery sugary goodness into my mouth. I take my time chewing.
    Unfortunately, Dolly is patient.
    “Come on, Laura.”
    “I already told you it wasn’t Derrick,” I whisper.
    She raises a brow. “Who was it, then?”
    I can’t answer that, so I answer her last question. “You’re right. It was good. And so are these pancakes. Yum yum.”
    Dolly sighs. I suppose she realizes if she wants more information she’ll have to beat it out of me, and she’ll probably wait to do that until she has her morning coffee. “Well eat up while I start on the next batch.”

Chapter 10
    After pancakes, the rest of the morning breezed by without incident.
    Then came lunch.
    “What a fucking pig!” Cassie growls as she slams her basket of burrito and tortilla chips on the table.
    Dolly reaches across and touches her wrist. “Come on, girl.”
    “No, I will not come on,” Cassie hisses as she spins her head back to focus on her target. “I can’t believe him!”
    Dolly sighs. “That’s just the kind of guy he is.”
    “Yeah, a fucking pig!” Cassie repeats.
    “If you know he’s a pig,” Dolly notes, “don’t expect him to do anything more than to stick his nose into any trough that offers food, roll around in the mud, and get you dirty and covered with someone else’s scraps.”
    “Ugh.” I push my tray away. “I can’t eat anymore.”
    “Sorry Laura,” Dolly says.
    I glance at Derrick. He’s peacefully eating and chatting with friends. For a while he had some girl in his lap. Cassie and Dolly, of course, think it’s the pinnacle of rudeness that he passed me in the lunch line without at least saying hello.
    Well, of course he wouldn’t say hello. I didn’t know who the masked man was, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t Derrick. Derrick wouldn’t woo a woman behind a mask. I knew he could read music, but I wasn’t even sure he was literate. And even if he was, he wouldn’t follow a woman around the shadows for years and write her letters. He wasn’t that creepy or desperate.
    My heart twinges. I just called my man creepy and desperate. And I liked him that way. What exactly did that make me?
    “That’s it,” Cassie says, standing. “I