Chapter 60

**Kapittel 60**

**Humming joyfully** while holding paper bags of groceries, Allison walked down to the parking lot, going to the area where she parked her car.

"Here we are," she muttered to herself when she arrived. With one hand, she opened her car's trunk and placed all of her groceries scrupulously. She was about to put the grocery bags inside when she felt the hairs on her back stand. She stiffened.

Feeling alerted, she stood straight, turned on her heels, and glanced her head left and right, finding for a person's presence but unfortunately, she found none. She scrunched her nose, sure that a person was watching her. She felt it. She thought that she was being watched.

'Must be my imagination,' she thought and shrugged her shoulders before turning on her heel once again to put her groceries in. When she was done, she closed the trunk and was about to enter the driver's seat when she glanced at a woman who was wearing such stylish clothes, her jaw dropped with one thought in her pretty little mind: shopping.

She leaned her back on the car and held her chin, pondering. It wouldn't be bad to shop a bit. Right, Brent wouldn't mind as well. Making up her mind, she took herself on her feet and made her way back to the mall with stealthy footsteps.

"This one seems nice," she told herself while scrutinizing a grey dress that had a tight fabric that would indeed embrace and define the curves of the wearer. It also had a sexy cut on the corset, especially on the sides of the waist, which made the dress look very daring. It would be suitable to wear if she went bar hopping.

She turned her head and caught a glance at a yellow off-shoulder dress made of soft fabric. It may be simple, but it looked sexy at the same time. The dress screamed the motif: "Simplicity is the new sexy."

She grabbed the dress from the rack and examined the two dresses she was holding, comparing them against one another. She raised the gray dress and thought: 'This one looks sexy and catchy. This fits any bar I would go to.'

She then raised the yellow dress, examined it, and thought: While this one very simple, yet se...

Blag!

Her thoughts were cut off when she heard a loud noise, startling her. She immediately turned her head to look in the direction where the noise came from. Looking left and right, she searched. But her whole world froze, and her heart pounded wildly when she caught sight of someone familiar, someone that she used to know. The person that she used to love. Dane.

Breathlessly, she sauntered towards him, who was picking up the things he had dropped, with small footsteps. Her brows met in confusion when she realized what he was picking up. Milk bottles. Pacifiers. Diapers. What in the world? Baby paraphernalia?

"Are you all right, sir?" asked a salesman as he kneeled before Dane and helped the latter pick up his things.

"Yeah," she heard him answer with a dead tired voice.

As she took further steps towards him, she noticed that his face looked tired and stressed. There were huge, dark bags under his eyes and lines formed on his handsome face, and he seemed to have lost weight. He looked like he hadn't got enough sleep for days.

The sight was already enough to make her knees wobble, and her heart shattered into smithereens. Seeing him like that broke her so much. She couldn't take seeing him like that.

'Oh, Dane,' she thought as she sauntered with a heavy breath. She knew that her best option was to pretend that she never saw or heard anything, but she chose the other, and that was to confront him. After all, they didn't have a proper closure after she found out that he cheated on her after all.

Right after all the things were returned to the plastic bags, the salesman left to do his duty. Allison then took her cue. "Dane?" she muttered his name, shuddering as she rolled her tongue to say it. Up until now, he still had a massive impact on her, and she knew it.

"Allison?" he muttered her name in flabbergast. He stood up in surprise. She observed his facial features. By the looks of his face, he didn't expect to see her in such a state.

"Hey," she mumbled before reaching to a plastic bag that was presumably his. She almost groaned when she realized that the plastic bag was as heavy as it had rocks placed inside and not baby paraphernalia.

"Here," she handed to him the heavy plastic bag, and the latter gladly took it with ease. Her brows kissed in confusion. 'How the...'

"I didn't expect to see you here," he stated, cutting her off from her thoughts.

She looked at him reluctantly and gave him a small smile. "Me either."

It felt awkward. Very awkward. Extremely awkward. Allison couldn't help but feel it. The reigning silence and the uncomfortable glances were making the atmosphere even more awkward. It felt like they were strangers. They knew each other, but both felt like they had just met today. 'Is this the aftermath of a breakup? Everything would go back to square one?' she thought.

"Can we talk?"

She gasped audibly when she heard him speak after the long silence. She looked at him incredulously with wide eyes. Deep inside her chest, her heart hammered crazily more than ever, along with her twisting insides that were panicking and her mind giving her two options that would give her two different effects that would surely affect her badly. However, one would give her a good result. Yes or no.

"Sure," she told him. Her heart fluttered in delight when she saw the corner of his lips twitched and etched into a beaming smile.

"Thank you," Dane told her before asking, "Where do you want to go, café or restaurant?"

"A cup of white coffee wouldn't be bad, right?" she asked him, giving him a charming smile that would make a man get on his knees.