SCORE
You never forget your first love. Isn't that what they say? Verity Hill knows this truth intimately. She didn't simply miss Wright "Monk" Bellamy when they parted ways in college. She's haunted by his touch. Every kiss, any lover since—it's a shadow of what they had.
Time heals all wounds. Isn't that what they say? Monk doesn't believe that for a second. He wasn't simply betrayed when he and Verity split. He was devastated, with parts of him left behind in the ruins of all that was destroyed.
At a party, they meet again for the first time since she walked away without a backward glance…
"He’s just some guy I’m fucking, Monk.”
Verity's 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?” she asks.
“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.
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 who 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, goosebumps flare over the silky skin of her arms. Her body telegraphs to mine that 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 it 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.
Little do Monk and Verity know their story’s not over yet.
When famed director Canon Holt brings them together to work on the set of an epic Harlem Renaissance biopic--Monk creating the score and Verity penning the script--this once-in-a-lifetime project could catapult their careers to new heights.
But can they put the past behind them for the sake of the film… for the sake of something more?
Get it all in SCORE, available May 2026.