Chapter 15 Monk
FIFTEEN
Monk
I should never have let this apartment start feeling like our place because now that she won’t be back, it will feel abandoned. Like something, someone will be missing.
She hasn’t come.
She hasn’t called.
It’s two o’clock in the damn morning and not a peep from her.
I bought her lies. I trusted her.
Falling for that beautiful face and that fat ass and those dark soulful eyes—that was my fault. I should have known better, but I know now. And I never want to see her again.
So why have you been sitting on this couch watching the door for the last four hours?
I run an anxious hand over the back of my neck. I was so furious, I tore out of Top Dog and didn’t look back, but now worry gnaws at my nerves. Kissing some man in a stall, she didn’t exactly look like she was in trouble, but is she safe? What if that guy… what if she…
“Shit.” I squeeze the bridge of my nose, hating that even now, I’m still concerned about her. With rage burning through every rational thought, I still fucking care.
Lost in the tumult of my own mind, I’m unprepared when her key finally turns in the lock. The door squeaks open by inches, like she’s trying to be quiet and doesn’t want to wake me up. Like a nigga could sleep with this shit unsettled.
As soon as she’s inside, our eyes meet. She has the decency not to speak. She folds her hands behind her back and leans against the door. We stare at each other until the silence screams all the things we can’t or won’t articulate.
“You got nothing to say?” I ask, my voice scratched through with rage and judgment.
“I…” She stops, gaze falling to the floor and starts again. “I know it looked bad.”
Incredulous laughter rolls out of me and shakes my shoulders, steals the breath from my lungs. I stand because my legs have just about fallen asleep sitting on this damn couch waiting for her to come and say… this?
“Which part do you think looked bad, Vee?” I tilt my head to study her. “His hand up your dress, on your ass? Your tits all out with some stranger in the bathroom like you were ’bout to get fucked up against a wall? Was that the bad part? Am I missing anything?”
“When I came to the studio earlier, I needed… I wanted—”
“So this my fault? Because you show up to my job wearing”—I sweep a hand in her direction and up and down her scantily clad body—“this shit, get on the floor, and pull my dick out, my clients not ten feet away. I was supposed to drop everything and fuck you?”
“I didn’t say—”
“And since I didn’t, you decided to take matters into your own hands and go fuck some guy in a bar? That’s all this meant to you?”
“Monk, no.” She crosses the room and stands in front of me. “This meant… it means… everything to me.”
“Don’t give me that shit.” I shake my head and step back, putting a few much-needed feet between us because she smells like cheap beer and some other dude’s cologne, but I’m still weak enough to want her. “I told you from the beginning. I said be sure. Be sure it can be just me.”
“It can be just you. It is. You’re not listening.”
“’Cause you ain’t saying shit, Vee!” I scream so loud it strains the muscles in my neck. “I told you I don’t do infidelity. I told you about my parents, what my father did to my mom, and you still…”
Hurt clogs my throat and I turn my back on her because my eyes are burning.
I won’t give her that. Never again will this woman get that from me.
Not my weakness, vulnerability, trust. But, God, it stings.
The truth of what she did sinks its claws in me so deep I’m surprised it doesn’t break the skin.
“You still did it,” I finish. “If you wanted to fuck somebody else—”
“I didn’t,” she says, her voice wet with tears now. “I don’t. I would never do that, Monk. I love—”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” I swing around to face her, eyes narrowed in rage. “Don’t you lie to my face when I saw that shit for myself.”
“I’m not lying to you.” She clutches her head in her hands. “I don’t know what’s going on. I drank too much. You know I don’t drink, but I’ve been so stressed out with this project.”
“So every time you’re stressed, I should expect you to flip out and fuck somebody in a bar? Noted.”
“I’m not saying that. Just that there’s been a lot going on. I don’t understand why it’s all affecting me so bad. I’m not making excuses.”
“Sounds like excuses to me. Did you think I’m so in love with you I’d just forgive it, or did you think I’d never find out?”
“I wasn’t thinking.” She looks so helpless and lost it almost softens my fury. “I don’t have an explanation that will make it better.”
“At least we agree on that.”
“Monk, please, just—”
“I watch you while you sleep. Did you know that?” I don’t wait for her response, but forge ahead.
“Because you’re so fucking beautiful when you’re asleep, but right now I can’t even remember how you look in my bed.
Can’t remember how you look when you come, when you laugh.
You erased everything tonight. Every good moment, every memory. ”
She closes her eyes, tears carving tracks through the heavy makeup. “Please don’t say that. Don’t say we can’t fix this.”
“Oh, I’m saying it. We can’t fix this. I drew a line—no cheating—and you crossed it, danced all over it.”
“I didn’t cheat,” she whispers.
“Oh, you mean because I got there before he fucked you? If I arrived five minutes later, I would have walked in on you getting pounded into the wall. If I hadn’t called and heard your phone, had just left without knowing you were in that restroom, what would’ve happened, Vee?”
She’s quiet, her eyes tortured. “Please give me another chance, Monk. Give me a chance to explain.”
“No second chances. Not with this. Not with me. I don’t need it explained when it was right in my face.”
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she says, her voice breaking. “But I’ll figure it out and I’ll make it right. Just don’t leave me.”
“I’m not leaving.” I cross the room and open the door. “You are.”
“No.” She shakes her head, her eyes not wavering from mine. “Not until we have this out.”
“There is no this. Not anymore. Get your cheating ass out of my apartment and don’t come back.” I slide my hands into my pockets and swipe all expression from my face. “If any of your shit is here, I’ll make sure it gets to your dorm, but you getting out. Now.”
“Monk, let me—”
“The fuck,” I mutter, walking back to her with long, angry strides and grabbing the purse off her shoulder, digging through it until I find her keys.
“What are you doing?” she whimpers.
I grab the key to my apartment, jerk it off the ring, and drop her bag on the floor.
“I said”—I point to the door—“get out.”
“But, Monk—”
“I really don’t want to have to pick you up and dump you in the hall like last night’s trash, Vee, but I will,” I say through clenched teeth, unsure how long I can hold back the flood of emotions threatening to overflow.
“For the last time, get out of my apartment and I don’t want to see your cheating face again. ”
I hold my breath and do something I haven’t done in a long time.
I pray.
I pray she leaves before she figures out how close I am to making a fool of myself.
That another minute with her this close, and I might lay my pride aside, cave and take anything she’s willing to give.
Even tasting her from another woman’s lips, another man’s, if that’s the only way I could have her.
That I would share her, even believing she’s been only mine and I’ve been only hers from the beginning of fucking time.
That I would settle for parts of her, even wanting the whole because it’s a better misery than having none of her at all.
I’m on the edge of confessing everything, of forfeiting my dignity, but my stony expression and unyielding silence must finally convince her to go.
She bends to retrieve her bag from the floor and walks to the door.
I follow, and even in these final moments, I’m drawn to the satin-skinned stretch of her back, the enticing curve of her ass, the way her hair curls sweetly at her nape.
I recall the whispered dreams, hopes, and ambitions we shared like secrets in the dark, wrapped in each other’s arms. And buried beneath the stench of the bar and of him, I still smell her. The real her.
It unfurls in my chest, tucked between the muscle of my heart and the curve of my rib—the absolute certainty that I will never feel this again.
Not quite this way for anyone else. I’m young with a bright future ahead of me, but it feels like losing Verity will haunt and devastate me for the rest of my life.
My mind and my heart know she cheated and she’s not for me, but my soul…
it will take a long time to convince my soul it was wrong about Verity Hill.
“I really am sorry, Monk,” she says, looking over her shoulder and finding my eyes. Her face is ravaged. Eyes puffy, lips swollen from the way she bites them when she’s anxious, blood vessels broken around her nose from the pressure of her sobs.
“Don’t be sorry,” I tell her. “Just get the hell out of my life and stay out.”
And with one last look that tells me, somehow, even though this was her doing, that she’s as devastated as I am—the girl I love in a way I don’t want to love anyone ever again, is gone.