Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
I come face-to-face with the man I thought I’d never see again.
“Verity,” Monk says, his mouth tight at the corners and his eyes narrowed. “So it is you.”
TWENTY
Monk
How many times have I laid in bed staring at the ceiling, wondering what I would say if I ever saw Verity Hill again?
Even with another woman lying naked and spent and cooling beside me, my thoughts would sometimes wander to her. Her sexy moans and breathy sighs when we made love. How the hair at her temples would curl with perspiration, and I would kiss them like she was made of sugar. Our till-the-sun-comes-up conversations about books and poetry and life, what we wanted to say to the world through our art. I was sure we’d do all of it together.
I shouldn’t have gone after her. I heard someone call her name, and that hind part of my brain, the primitive part that considered her mine before it was a conscious thought, had me turning, searching, chasing her.
Now we’re on the periphery of the party, away from the crowd—somehow the only two on the sidewalk. I feel like a fool and have no idea what to say to this woman.
“You live here?” I ask, sliding my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “New York, I mean, or are you just—”
“Yeah, I live here.” She twists her lips and shrugs, her bare shoulders a gleaming, elegant curve. “Or I did. Tonight’s my last night in the city.”
“Wait.” A frown powered by frustration settles on my face. “You’ve been here since you left Finley?”
“No, just the last six months. I got a job here with a production company.”
“But you’re leaving tomorrow?”
I know I’m probing, asking too many questions, but if I don’t ask these, then the one that has been ricocheting in my head for two years will barge out.
How could you? How could you ruin us like that?
“Yeah. I’m going back to Cali,” she says, shifting from one foot to the other and crossing her arms at her waist, like she used to when she was nervous. Do I make her nervous? I hope so. I hope coming face-to-face with her own duplicity makes her feel nervous and ashamed and guilty. That’s the least she owes me.
“I got a fellowship in LA,” she says into the strained silence. “At least for a year, I’ll have my basic expenses covered so I can focus on writing.”
“You finished your degree?”
“No. I… had to withdraw. I was living at home in Georgia for a while before I moved here.”
There’s a slight tremor to her hand when she smooths it over her hip and down the curve of her thigh. She probably doesn’t realize how it draws attention to the way the silky fabric licks at her skin, showcasing every supple line and exaggerated swell of her body. Or maybe she does and she just wants to see if she can still torture me.
“Guess you left before you got to turn in the script you were so stressed over,” I say, needing to change the subject before my erection inserts itself into this conversation.
I also hope the mention of that last semester might prompt her to apologize, beg my forgiveness, explain. Something. Dammit, something besides the wounded look she’s wearing now. What the hell does she have to look wounded about? I’m the one who got cheated on.
“No, but it wasn’t a total waste.” She smiles and it’s her real one, a curve of her lips that lights her eyes and lifts the apples of her cheeks. “That script won me this fellowship.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
She stares at me, her mouth opening and closing a few times before she drops her eyes to the sidewalk. Is it there on the tip of her tongue? The words to explain what went so wrong? What I did or didn’t do that made her fall out of love with me, because there has never been any doubt in my mind Verity loved me. It was a comet, swift and bright and short-tailed. Interstellar and ill-fated. As real and out of reach as the stars, but I held it—I held her—at least for a time.
“Hey, Verity.” The guy who called her name in the crowd walks up and slips an arm around her waist. “Babe, you still want fish?”
“Um, yeah.” She looks up at him, placing a hand over his where it rests just beneath the curve of her breast. “I’ll be there in a sec. I’m, um… this is Wright Bellamy. We went to college together for a bit. Monk, this is Luis.”
“Oh. You’re with the band.” He extends his fist. “You guys sounded great. Nice to meet you.”
“Thanks,” I say, reluctantly dapping him up.
The stiff smile on his face is at odds with the traces of hostility in his eyes when he looks at me. I know that look. I wore that look for a semester. Possessive, warning everyone else off.