Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Their laughter followed me to the hallway and up the stairs, but it was Kaea’s voice that rang in my head, his words tumbling around and around in my skull. I remembered Professor Hammett. A middle-aged man with pallid white skin, brown hair, and round spectacles, his body pudgy around the middle and his jaw soft.
I’d only known of him because Darcie and Bea had dragged me along to a public lecture of his. What had it been? History of Engineering? No, more esoteric, but to do with their shared major.
“Engineering runs in our blood,” Darcie had said during one of the times when she and Bea had been as thick as thieves. “Dad, Granddad, Aunt Helene, and now me and Bea. We’re going to open our own firm, aren’t we, Triss? Shepherd and Shepherd.”
Triss.
I’d forgotten that, how Darcie always called Bea by her childhood pet name when they were getting along. I hadn’t heard it for at least a year prior to Bea’s suicide. But they’d been tight when we’d gone to that lecture.
My hand slid up the last bit of the banister as I gave up attempting to recall the exact subject of the lecture. Most of it had gone over my head, but Bea and Darcie had been enthralled. I’d taken several photographs of Hammett. There’d been something about his eyes. Such an ordinary-looking man, but with such depth in his eyes.
What the hell had Kaea been talking about?
I pushed through into my bedroom, wishing we hadn’t been interrupted. I’d get it out of him tomorrow, I thought as I kicked off my sneakers and began to undress. And while he might believe me oblivious, I knew secrets, too, things Kaea would never know.
No one but Vansi and I knew that Vansi had suffered an early-in-pregnancy miscarriage at twenty-one. Phoenix hadn’t even been aware she was pregnant. She’d still been deciding what to do about it. Then her body had made the decision for her in a gush of blood.
She’d been so strange that night, my best friend. Hollow-eyed yet resolute. “I want him to be with me because he loves me, Luna.” Her fingers bruising on my wrist. “I don’t want him to be forced into it.”
That wasn’t the only secret I kept.
Walking naked to the window, the air in the room a chill second skin, I pressed my hand to the glass while looking out at the graveyard obliterated by the darkness and the rain. All I could see were the droplets on the glass, fat little globes that rolled at a speed that should’ve worried me for what it indicated about the weather.
But it was Bea on my mind.
Bea who’d kissed girls as well as boys. Never me. I hadn’t been interested and for some reason, that had made my love for her all the more precious to her. I’d wanted nothing from her but her mere presence.
Bea, who was no angel and all the more lovable for it.
Bea, who’d like to steal little things and keep them in a treasure box in my room. Stupid things. Cheap things. The joy in the sleight of hand. Her favorite acquisition a pen from the desk of the banker who managed the trust left behind by her and Darcie’s parents.
Bea, who’d snorted white powder off a glass table in front of me one night in a club, then later told me the high wasn’t worth it. Her pupils had been dilated at the time, her hair spread out in a fan below her head as she lay on my bed, her fingers stroking my cheek. “Nae-nae, my Nae-nae, you’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
A tilt of her head, a funny little smile. “Why?”
“Because I love you.” My world was simple, my needs simpler yet.
When she’d brushed her fingertips over my lips, I’d gently pulled away her hand. “You need to sleep.”
Tense muscles, a stark gaze. “What do you want from me?” she’d demanded in a soft whisper. “Why don’t you want anything at all?”
“That you exist in this world? It’s enough.” I’d never found a word to define my sexuality or my needs. None that existed in the world quite fit. All I knew was that Bea was the only person I had ever loved that way, and would ever love. The only one who’d lit me up on the inside, made me comprehend what Vansi meant when she talked about her love for Phoenix, and why Darcie looked at Ash that way.
For the first and only time in my life, I’d understood why my friends did frankly insane things in the grip of love. And I’d felt sorry for Darcie. Because Ash was never going to give her what she needed; Ash had already chosen his person and it wasn’t Darcie.
I’d never been jealous of him. He might have Bea, but I was the only one who knew Bea.