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“Monk?” I tilt my head down, trying to catch his eyes. “I said I don’t want anyone else. I told Chris I was seeing someone.”
He cuts his eyes to me, alert. “You told him that?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to lead him on, not when I all I want is… us.”
His expression goes terribly neutral, and he slowly pulls his hand away. He stands and walks over to the mantel. His back turned to me, he stretches his arms wide and grips the edge.
“Monk, say something.” I breathe out an uneasy laugh. “I’m asking if you want it to be just us. Just you.”
“We tried that, though, didn’t we?” He turns around and leans his shoulders back against the mantel. “Look, after twelve years, we’re finally speaking, getting along. Maybe we leave it at that.”
There’s something burning a hole in the lining of my stomach. “But… you said you didn’t want to share me. That you want monogamy, and I’m saying—”
“I care about you, Vee,” he interrupts. The hands at his sides ball into fists, and he shoves them into his pockets. “I think you’re amazing, but I don’t think wereallywant the same thing, and that’s okay. We’ll finishDessiand go our separate ways.”
“You don’t want me?” I ask, and the words sound like glass shattering. Fragile and sharp.
“I do.” His eyes soften, and he drops his gaze, his half smile self-deprecating. “Too much.”
The truth, the realization, hits me like a baseball bat to the belly. “It’s not that you don’t want me. It’s that you don’ttrustme.”
He doesn’t respond, but the answer flickers across his face.
“We all have our trauma, I guess.” He shrugs. “I know I said I could get past what happened, and I can so that we can be friends. I did so we could—”
“Fuck.”
He stills, guilt and then defiance crossing his face. “Okay, yeah, I got past it so we could fuck because I’ve never, not ever wanted anyone the way I want you.”
“Monk, I—”
“But you know that, don’t you?” The look he levels on me contains somuch passion that for a moment, it feels like hate. It scorches me. “Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
I know it because I recognize it. Iamit. I’m as obsessed with him as he apparently is with me. What else do you call it when twelve years apart doesn’t dull the ache? Doesn’t dent the want? Has this desire grown? Or has itfestered? If it’s toxic, I’m too weak to walk away.
“I thought I could do it. Take just a little and be fine if someone else had some. Why not? I’ve done it before with other women.” His laugh is blunt and bitter. “But not you. All these years, and I still can’t manage to want less than everything from you.”
“And you can’t trust me to give it to you,” I whisper, “because of what I did.”
“I barely survived losing you the first time, Verity. I can’t do that again. I mean losing what I thought we could be, which was forever. That’s what I wanted with you. After what happened with my parents, it took me a long time to believe I’d find someone I would want that with. Someone I could trust that with.”
“And I betrayed that trust,” I say, not bothering to swipe at the tears streaking over my cheeks.
He doesn’t reply, but the lingering pain in his eyes is something he must have hidden from me, smoothed it over with hungry kisses and light banter—but there is nothing light in the air between us. It hangs heavy with disillusionment and hurt and fractured trust. And I see the boy he must have once been who believed in happily ever afters and white picket fences because his parents made him think it was possible. When that fell apart, there was some part of him that still wanted it for himself.
And he wanted it with me.
Could he again?
I don’t even know if it will make a difference, but Dr. Palmer’s words keep ringing in my head.
At some point, you’ll have to reckon with the possibility that you may want to spend your life with someone, and if they want to spend their life withyou, you’ll have to let them in.
I don’t know if Monk wants to spend his life with me, and I’m not even sure heshould, but this taste, this glimpse I’ve had the last few weeks, of how we could be together—I’m willing to fight for that, whatever shape it takes. All this time, my fear has not been that Monk wouldn’t accept me once he knew the whole truth, but that hewould. Not that once he knows the truth he will leave, but that he’ll stay.
How can I ask him to stay?
