Chapter 20
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.
Good luck, bruh. Didn’t work for me.
“I thought you were hungry,” he says, sliding his hand down and squeezing her hip.
Verity frowns. “I am, but—”
“Maybe you could give us a minute,” I cut in, folding my arms across my chest and watching him steadily. “We’re catching up.”
The sounds and scents of the stoop party melt into the moment while he and I consider each other. Verity steps out of his hold and fiddles with the gold hoop in her ear as we wait for Luis to step off.
“Right,” he finally says. “I’ll get your plate, babe. You still want fish? Slaw? Hush puppies?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks.” She flashes a smile that dismisses him, even though he lingers a few more seconds before walking away, leaving a charged quiet between Verity and me.
“Boyfriend?” I ask, keeping my tone casual.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I don’t do relationships.”
“That would’ve been great to know when we were supposed to be in one.”
She stills and straightens her spine, the first sign of fire in her eyes when they meet mine. “Anymore. I don’t do relationships anymore.”
“That’s probably for the best so there’s no confusion. Monogamy is apparently a very complex concept.”
“It’s actually quite simple. I’m just not interested in it.”
“I seem to remember asking you about that and you said you were interested at the time.”
She shrugs, holding my stare almost defiantly. “Lesson learned.”
“You could have saved us both a lot of time and…” I won’t say heartbreak. I won’t give her the satisfaction. “Trouble.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she says, the lines of her face softening. “You’re right. I never should have… it was a mistake.”
“What exactly was the mistake, Verity?” I demand, heat rising around my neck with my anger. “Not keeping your legs closed? Lying to me?”
“It was a tough time in my life,” she says, her voice dropping, her eyes shifting away from mine. “I underestimated what I was going through and how hard it would be to navigate. That’s all.”
“Got it.” I give a sharp nod. “So now you find guys like Luis. He’s just some guy you’re fucking.”
“That’s right. He’s just some guy I’m fucking.” Her chin juts to a proud angle, and that glorious mouth of hers pulls tight. “What the hell does it have to do with you? You don’t have girls you just fuck?”
“Yeah, but you were never one of them.”
I want to scrape the words out of the air and shove them back down my throat.
It’s an admission of how devastated I was when she cheated.
Maybe I can salvage this, walk away before she realizes she still affects me.
She’s still the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.
It’s not just her physically. It’s the mystery of her eyes—that there are secrets in them only the right person could ferret out.
It’s in her stillness, in her quiet. Makes you wonder how she sounds when she moans and writhes.
I knew. I had that, and as much as I wish I didn’t, I’ve missed it.
“Monk,” she says, some amalgamation of sadness and regret making her eyes brighter. “I—”
“I’m gonna go.” I turn before she can say whatever bullshit she was thinking. “Have a nice life, Verity.”
One step. Two. Three. Four.
The farther I get, the deeper the ache in my chest grows. How does she do that to me? In less than five minutes? In fewer than a hundred words, how does she tie me up like this again? My brain knows what she did and what she really is, but every other part of me just doesn’t give a fuck.
“You know what,” I say, turning back, almost surprised to find her still standing like a statue exactly where I left her. “I changed my mind. There is something else.”
She pulls back her shoulders as if bracing for my next words. “What is it?”
“Did I miss the signs? Completely misjudge what you felt? At first, I thought I must have gotten it wrong, but then I remember.”
The slim line of her throat works at a swallow and she knots the dress in her fists, but is otherwise completely still.
“What do you remember?” she asks, her voice low, a wisp of smoke.
I step as close to her as I can without touching.
Close enough to smell the cleanness of her skin under tonight’s sweat and to feel the subtle heat of her body.
I look down at her, and from my height, with her eyes cast down, her lashes paint crescents on the lush rise of her cheeks.
Her breasts lift sharply with the hitch of her breath.
Even in the summer heat, goose bumps flare over the silky skin of her arms. Her body telegraphs to mine that, though she may have betrayed me, the electric current that always flowed from her to me is still alive. I feel it, too.
“This.” I bend to whisper at her ear. “I remember this right here.”
She closes her eyes and bites down hard on her bottom lip. “Monk, don’t.”
“It was real, what we had,” I tell her, my voice going raspy and rough. “I don’t know how or when it went wrong, but for a while, it was real and it was the best…”
My voice gives out. I give up. I gulp down the rage and lingering hurt to push the last words out.
“You ruined it,” I say. “I wish you could just admit that.”
We’re cocooned in this tension woven from unspoken truth and leashed desire. The party, a cacophony of laughter and music and lifted voices, fades. I barely hear it over the sound of our breaths and the heartbeat pounding in my ears. The silence stretches so long, my hands tighten at my sides.
“Right,” I clip out when it’s clear she has nothing more to offer. “Got it.”
I turn and head back down the sidewalk, where I should have kept going in the first place. I’m almost at the corner when she calls.
“Monk.”
I still, my muscles going rigid at the sound of her voice. I don’t turn around, but I do glance over my shoulder. Her face is smoothed free of expression, but her eyes are alive with emotion.
“It was real, and I ruined it,” she says, gravel and regret mixing in the words. “And I’m sorry.”
I stare at her, not nearly as satisfied as I thought I would be. If anything, hearing her admission only makes the betrayal worse.
I nod and give her a stony stare. “Now you can have a nice life.”
And as I walk away, when I tell myself I hope I never see her again, this time I mean it.