Coming Home by Laurie Breton Read Free Book Online

tell me about?”
    “I had something better.  One hell of a singing voice.  I always
knew it would be my ticket out of the North End.”
    “It’s what you were meant to do,” she said.  “It’s in your blood,
like a virus.”
    “How is it you understand me so well?”  Those blue eyes were
puzzled.  “You know things about me that I don’t know myself.”
    “It’s easy to see other people objectively.  It’s harder to see
yourself that way.”
    “I don’t know,” he said.  “I’m having a devil of a time trying to
see you objectively.”  The intensity of his assessment brought a hot flush to
her face.  “Do you have any idea how sexy you look in my shirt?”
    She looked down at her slender legs beneath his white cotton
shirt.  “No,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his boldly.  “But I know
exactly how sexy you look out of it.”
    “Christ,” he said, just before he kissed her, “I think I’ve
created a monster.”
     
    ***
     
    Hands tucked in the pockets of his Levi’s, Danny Fiore stood at
the window, watching the first light of dawn touch the eastern sky and
wondering when he’d stopped wanting to run away.
    He’d tried to run.  When running hadn’t worked, he’d decided there
was no reason they couldn’t discuss the situation like two rational adults. 
But he’d been wrong again; he’d forgotten that the moment she walked into the
room, one of them regressed to a fifteen-year-old, all knees and elbows and
quavering uncertainty.  So he’d done the only thing left to do:  he’d given in
to the tumult inside him.
    And when he touched her, he knew he was lost.
    He had nothing to offer her.  Eighty-seven bucks and change, a
rusted ten-year-old Chevy, and three years’ back issues of Rolling Stone . 
It was no life for a woman, at least not for the kind of woman Casey was.  But
if he did nothing, she would go home, back to Jesse, and half his insides would
go with her.
    Danny rested his forehead against the window pane and closed his
eyes.  What he knew about love you could put in a thimble.  He was no good at
intimacy.  Christ, that was a lie; he didn’t know if he was any good at it. 
He’d never had a chance to find out.  All he understood was singing, and the way
the music made him feel.  Until now, it had been enough.
    She was sleeping in a tangle of dark hair and slender limbs and
rumpled sheets.  Danny sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think of the
right words to say.  She deserved champagne and roses, candlelight and soft
music.  Not a marriage proposal from some crazy wop bastard at five in the
morning on sheets that hadn’t been changed in a week.
    He touched her cheek to awaken her.  She stretched like a cat
before opening sleep-studded eyes to his.  When she smiled, his heart rolled
over in his chest.  “Look,” he said, the words suddenly tumbling out of him so
fast he was tripping over them.  “I’m not in a position to offer you anything
even faintly resembling an orthodox life.  My life’s chaotic, and I don’t see
it getting any better in the foreseeable future.  Right now, I don’t have the
proverbial pot to piss in or the window to throw it out of.  But it won’t
always be that way.”  He paused for breath.  “By God,” he said, “I mean to have
it all.  But there may be hard times along the way.  And you have to know up
front that I won’t change, not even for you—”  He stopped, suddenly aware that
he was rambling.  “I’m not making any sense, am I?”
    Softly, she said, “You’re doing just fine.”
    He ran a hand through his hair.  “I had all these flowery things I
wanted to say, and I’m saying this all wrong—”
    “Yes,” she said.
    He blinked.  “Yes, what?”
    “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
    He was grinning, grinning like a fool, and he couldn’t help it. 
“I haven’t asked you yet.”
    “If I waited for you to get to the point,” she said, “ we’d have
to spend our