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’ve never been part of a process like this. I knew Canon was an incredible director, of course, but tonight I learned that he is also a terrific leader. He has a reputation for being controlling, and maybe once we’re on set, he will be—a tyrant about being prompt and prepared. But here, tonight, with this team of creatives he has built so much trust and chemistry with over the years, he lets them run wild. He fosters a creative process that moves and shifts and roams, not steered by any one person, but feeding from us all.
After an hour or so of brainstorming, the group reluctantly starts to leave the theater and drift outside. We’ve been here for hours, and Graham has to practically push them all out. Lucia and I are in the kitchen laughing about how grueling the routines she’s envisioning will be for the poor dancers when Monk walks in. He stands at the counter and stares at me, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. I keep talking with Lucia, and even angle my body away so I don’t have to see him at all. Lucia’s conversation begins to falter the longer he just stands there, and her eyes flick over my shoulder to Monk every few seconds. A wry grin works its way onto her expressive face.
“I, um, think Mr. Bellamy wants a word,” Lucia says, tossing her Diet Coke can into the recycling.
I finally level a glare over my shoulder at him, but his face remains expressionless.
“Really great meeting you, Verity,” Lucia says. “Looking forward to working with you.”
She punches Monk’s shoulder playfully. “This’ll be fun. Haven’t seen you since that last project two years ago.”
“That movie turned me off musicals.” He chuckles. “Only Canon could lure me into something even close again.”
“Well, glad he did,” she says. “You’re the best. See you guys later.”
When she leaves, a thick silence descends on the kitchen. It’s suffocating, pressing against my ears and clogging my throat like fog.
“What?” I snap, brows bent into a frown.
“That’s how you talk to an old friend?” Monk asks with a straight face.
“Oh, I thought we ‘dated in college.’” I hit him with the air quotes and let my hands land on my hips. “Why would you even say that?”
“Should I have said we used to fuck?”
Something I’d like to ignore stirs low in my belly.
“Um, you could have said we’ve met,” I offer, frowning up at him, “or just said nothing at all.”
“Nothing?” His laugh rings harshly in the empty kitchen. “You thought I was gonna pretend we didn’t know each other? We’re adults. I don’t like to pretend or keep secrets.”
“Not putting our business out there for the whole crew to know is not keeping secrets. It’s being discreet.”
“Oh, I’ve seen your version of discreet, Verity.”
The words carry a bite so sharp it takes me back to that bathroom stall at Top Dog.
“Why are you being such an asshole about something that happened over a decade ago?” I ask. “I wasn’t even at Finley a full year, and we were together even less.”
“Next you’ll say we barely knew each other.” He lifts one brow. “That how you want to play this?”
He’s right because it felt like I already knew him the night we met. Not the details that came later—his favorite movie, the song he sang at his grandfather’s funeral, what he’d save in a fire—but something more elemental that drew us together immediately. Inexorably.
“I don’t want to play this any kind of way,” I say after a moment to gather my scattered thoughts. “I want us to get past it. You knew more about me in a few months than anyone ever had, and I knew you. I just messed up. I was young and reckless, and I messed up.”
“It took a lot for me to trust anyone the way I trusted you, and you were… What we had meant a lot to me. I know it wasn’t the same to you, but—”
“It was.”
I shouldn’t have said it; should let him go on thinking I was some cheat who took what we had for granted, but hearing the hurt behind his harshness, I can’t. He flashes me a look so scornful, I press my hand over my heart, as if that would protect me from the daggers he’s shooting at me.
“This would be easier,” he bites out, “if you’d stop lying to me. Stop pretending it was something it wasn’t. Like you said. We were both young and I expected too much.”
“Okay. Whatever,” I sigh, closing my eyes to block out the enmity in his. “I don’t know what I can do to make this right, but I do know we won’t get through the next six months of this shoot if you can’t let it go. We both have to let this go if we’re going to work together.”