Hearts Aflame Collection III: 4-Book Bundle Read Online Free Page A

don't?” he asked in that condescending way.
    She threw her fingers up in exasperation, punching the stop button on the microwave, yanking the door open, and grabbing her food. She sat down at the head of the kitchen table, the farthest point in the room from John.
    He sighed, swiping a stray strand of hair from his forehead and lit another cigarette.
    “Well, can you say something?” she demanded in between bites.
    “What do you want me to say?” he replied, as he held the smoke from his first drag in the top of his lungs.
    She shrugged dramatically, slamming her fork into the plate of food. “Well, I don't know. It just feels like you don't even care that we're fighting.”
    “ We aren't fighting,” John replied. “You are.”
    “God, I just don't understand what is so difficult about making one measly performance.”
    “I'm sorry, I had work.” John didn't sound very sorry at all.
    She scoffed, “Well, this is my work too, John. I don't I feel like we're in this relationship: you don't support me at all.”
    He put out his cigarette, then stood up, putting on his jacket. “It's been getting really busy at the office, and you know your work won't support us.”
    She dropped her fork, her mouth wide in hurt and surprise. “I can't believe you just pulled the bacon card.”
    John raised an eyebrow. “I wasn't pulling the bacon card, Marge. Please, just calm down.”
    “Where are you going?” she demanded.
    He just shrugged. “To get some peace and quiet.”
    She ducked her head in disbelief. “You can't go now. We're in the middle of a discussion.”
    “Well, if you wouldn't yell at me...”
    “I'm sorry, John, but the only way I can get you to notice me is if I yell at you,” she cried.
    John grimaced at the sound.
    “It's just…I feel like you care more about your criminal clients than you do about me,” she pouted.
    John shook his head, huffing in exasperation, and left the room. In the next moment, he was in his car, revving the engine, contemplating closing the garage door and just sitting there. The last thing he ever wanted to do was to have to go back into his own house and the thought of that depressed him. He wondered how he even found himself in this position to begin with. He knew it wasn't fair to Marge, staying with her even though they both knew he didn't love her, but at the same time, what was either of them going to do?
    He had felt a space growing in between them, so he decided that buying a house with her would make it go away. He was determined to do whatever was necessary to make that space go away. He wouldn't accept the possibility that it might not work out with her, because if it didn't work out with her, who would it ever work out with?
    Despite his passive suicidal ideation, he decided to open the garage and pull out of the driveway. He had no plan and wondered at the possibility of simply driving around until his car ran out of gas, then staying wherever he ended up. He maneuvered his car through the streets of New Orleans, stopping once he had reached a small coffee shop.
    With his car carefully parked, he sat for a moment, allowing the memories to flood through. He let himself think her name: Jeanine. Just once, or maybe twice. Not three times, because then it forms itself into a nostalgia, and that nostalgia becomes that longing and that longing grows until it’s an unquenchable desire, something he ran from: unquenchable desires.
    He longed to see her again, hoped and wished for the opportunity of one chance meeting. Yet, he couldn't be sure where she could have gone. After almost ten years of accepting her disappearance, John was ready to understand the fact that she could have very well been dead. With a sigh, he cut the engine and left his car.
    The café was small, having only enough room to seat maybe ten or fifteen people. It was the secret hangout spot for him and his friends as a child, and when he grew older, became the place of choice while he was dating