Not Looking For Love: Episode 5 Read Online Free Page A

of crazy drug dealers who I've only met a handful of times and don't really want to see ever again. Meanwhile, Scott's got this big loving family that'll obviously stay together forever no matter what, and they're threatening each other like that's something you just throw away.
    "Your niece and nephew really love you," I whisper and snuggle even closer to him. Marjorie packed them up and stormed from the house when another argument broke out after lunch and she didn't come back that time.
    "Yeah, they're great," Scott says.
    "She shouldn't keep them away from you," I mutter, fighting down the thought of how much our daughter would love him too, if I hadn't murdered her. I try to bury her under the anger, but that's dissipating like it never was.
    "She'll come around," Scott says. "At least I hope she does."
    "And Mike, you forgive him, right? You won't go finishing anything with him?" I ask.
    Scott's eyes turn as hard as the concrete beneath the slippery blanket of slush. "Not really.   Mike's been getting away with too many things, because of what he went through. This time he went to far."
    I couldn't agree more, but I won't encourage another altercation. "What happened to him?"
    "He was the one who found my mom when she was stabbed. It messed him up pretty bad," Scott says.
    My heart is thumping in my chest, a whole new understanding of Mike forming in my head. He couldn't have been more than 12 when that happened. I still can't get my mom's gleaming dead eyes out of my mind. How horrible it must be to see your mom lying in a pool of blood.  
    "That's terrible," I whisper, though it hardly conveys the real emotions cluttering up my chest.
    "Yeah, it is. He came home early from school, and she was still alive then, but she died in his arms. She kept trying to say something to him, but only blood bubbled out of her mouth, because they'd punctured her lung. Or at least that's how he described it. I never can tell when he's lying to me."
    "It's still a horrible thing to go through," I muse. "Even if only some of what he told you is true."
    Scott turns to me, his expression twisted in anger, pity and compassion. "He described it to me so many times it's like I found her too. But let's drop it now. I don't even know why I'm talking about all this."
    "Must be from sitting in that kitchen all day," I say, realizing a little too late that he might get offended.  
    He laughs. "You noticed it too, right? How nothing ever gets resolved?"
    I nod. Mostly I just noticed the void, the trapped sorrow and pain. But trying to explain that would make me sound insane, and Scott has enough of those examples for now. "Maybe that's how families work, in general."  
    "Yours argues all the time?" he asks harshly and my heart flips in my chest.  
    'Sometimes," I mumble. My mom is dead. I will never argue with her again.
    "Sorry," he says. "They just piss me off sometimes."
    I wrap my arm tighter around his and lean into him. "It's fine."
      The streetlight come on just as we turn into his street, and I wish, with all my heart, that things would just get easier already. Less painful, more free, soft like the snow falling all around us, encasing the world in an eerie silence where nothing bad ever happens.
    My car's buried under a foot of snow. We're stopped in front of it, Scott gazing up at his dark windows, my heart racing in my chest, hot anger rising with each beat, because I'm certain this is it, that he'll just send me away again now, and never call me again, never pick up the phone when I do.
    "It's gonna be freezing up there tonight," he finally says, turning so a wad of snow crashes down my sleeve from the umbrella. "Wanna just go to your house?"
    The grin spreading across my face makes my cheeks ache. "That's a great idea."
    I help him pack, while the cat's purring fills the entire apartment. After he's done I try to pick her up and carry her up to the attic. But she hisses, beating at me with her paws.
    "Just leave her," Scott says.