Verity Read online

  I let him slide out of my mouth. “How many women have sucked your dick?”

  He lifted up onto his elbows and looked down at me, perplexed. “Are you serious?”

  “More like curious.”

  He laughed, dropping his head back to the pillow. “I don’t know. I’ve never counted.”

  “That many?” I teased. I climbed up his body and straddled him. I liked it when he jerked beneath me and gripped my thighs. “If it’s not an immediate answer, that means it’s more than five.”

  “Definitely more than five,” he said.

  “More than ten?”

  “Maybe. Possibly. Yes.”

  It’s odd how that didn’t make me jealous, but two infants could leave me seething. Maybe it was because the girls were currently in his life, but all his past whores were just that…in the past.

  “More than twenty?”

  He raised his hands to my breasts and cupped them. Squeezed them. He was getting that look on his face that was my cue I was about to be fucked. Hard. “That’s probably a good estimate,” he whispered, pulling me to him. He brought his lips close to mine and stuck a hand between us, rubbing me. “How many guys have licked your pussy?”

  “Two. I’m not a whore like you.”

  He laughed against my lips and then rolled me onto my back. “But you’re in love with a whore.”

  “A former whore,” I clarified.

  I had been wrong about the look he had gotten in his eye. He didn’t fuck me that night. He made love to me. Kissed every inch of my body. Made me lie still while he teased me and tortured me, when all I wanted to do was suck his dick. Every time I tried to move, to take over, he would stop me.

  I don’t know why I got so much pleasure out of pleasing him, but I liked it more than being pleased. That’s probably defined in the love languages or some bullshit. My love language was acts of service. Jeremy’s love language was getting his dick sucked. We were a perfect match.

  He was moments from climax when one of the girls started crying. He groaned, and I rolled my eyes, and we both reached for the monitor. Him to look at them. Me to turn it off.

  I could feel him growing softer inside me, so I pulled the plug out of the back of the monitor. We could still hear the cries coming from down the hallway, but I was certain I could drown them out if he’d just resume where we left off.

  “I’ll go check,” he said, trying to roll off me. I pulled him back to the bed and climbed on top of him.

  “I’ll go when you finish. Let her cry for a few minutes. It’s good for them.”

  He didn’t seem comfortable with that, but once my mouth was back on his dick, he accepted it.

  I’d gotten so much better at swallowing compared to the first time I attempted it. I could feel him ready to come, so I pretended I was gagging. I don’t know why, but that always set him off, thinking I was choking on his cock. Men. He groaned, and I forced him farther down my throat with another gurgling sound, and then it was over. I swallowed, wiped my mouth, and then stood up. “Go to sleep. I can deal with it.”

  I actually wanted to deal with it this time. It was the first time I’d ever felt anything other than irritation at the thought of having to feed them. But I wanted to feed Chastin. Hold her, cuddle her, love her. I was excited when I approached their bedroom.

  But that excitement turned to irritation as soon as I saw that it was Harper who was crying.

  How disappointing.

  Their cribs were head to head, and I was surprised Chastin was sleeping through Harper’s screams. I walked past Harper and looked down at Chastin.

  It hurt how much I felt for her in that moment. It hurt how much I wanted Harper to shut up.

  I lifted Chastin out of her crib and carried her to the rocking chair. When I sat down with her, she stirred in my arms. I thought about my dream and how terrified I was to see Harper trying to hurt her. I thought I might cry just from the thought of losing her someday. At the thought of it all one day possibly coming true.

  Maybe what I felt was mother’s intuition. Maybe, deep down, I knew something terrible was going to happen to Chastin, and that’s why I had been given that immense and sudden love for her. What if it was the universe’s way of telling me to love that baby girl as much and as hard as I possibly could, because I wouldn’t have her for as long as I would have Harper?

  Maybe that was why I felt nothing for Harper yet. Because Chastin was the one whose life was going to be cut short. She would die, and then Harper would be the only one left.

  I knew, somewhere inside me, I must have been burying the love I had for Harper. Saving it for after my time with Chastin.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, getting a headache from Harper’s screaming. Shut the fuck up! Crying, crying, crying! I’m trying to bond with my baby!

  I tried to ignore it for a few more minutes, but I was afraid it would concern Jeremy. I eventually put Chastin back in her bed, surprised she was still asleep. She really is a good baby. I moved to Harper’s crib and looked down at her, filling with anger. It somehow felt like her fault that I’d had the dream.

  Maybe I was misinterpreting my dream. Maybe it wasn’t a premonition. Maybe it was a warning. If I didn’t do something about Harper before it was too late, Chastin would die.

  I suddenly had this overwhelming urge to rectify what I knew was going to happen. Never in all my life had a dream been that vivid to me. I felt if I didn’t do something about it in that moment, it would come true any day. For the first time, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Chastin. It hurt almost as much as the thought of losing Jeremy.

  I didn’t know anything about ending a life, much less the life of an infant. The one time I’d tried, it resulted in nothing more than a scratch. But I’d heard of SIDS. Jeremy had made me read about it. It’s not uncommon, but I didn’t know enough about it to know if they would be able to tell a difference between suffocation and SIDS.

  I’d heard of people choking in their sleep on their own vomit, though. That would probably be harder to declare an intentional act.

  I touched my finger to Harper’s lips. Her head moved back and forth quickly, thinking it was a bottle. She latched on and began sucking the tip of my finger, but she wasn’t satisfied. She released my finger and started screaming again. Kicking. I shoved my finger farther into her mouth.

  She was still crying, so I continued to shove. She made a gasping sound, but was somehow still crying. Maybe one finger wasn’t enough.

  I pushed two fingers into her mouth and throat, until my knuckles were pressed against her gums and she was no longer crying. I watched her for a moment, and soon, her arms began to stiffen between each violent jerk of her little body. Her legs locked up.

  This is what she would have done to her sister if I hadn’t done it to her first. I’m saving Chastin’s life.

  “She okay?” Jeremy asked.

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I pulled my fingers out of Harper’s mouth and picked her up, pressing her face into my chest so Jeremy couldn’t hear her gasping for air. “I don’t know,” I said, turning to him. He was making his way across the room. My voice was frantic. “I can’t make her happy. I’ve tried everything.” I was petting the back of her head, attempting to show him how concerned I was.

  That’s when she puked on me. As soon as she puked, she screamed. Wailed. Her voice sounded hoarse, and she was gasping between screams. It was a cry like neither of us had ever heard before. Jeremy quickly grabbed her, pulling her from me so he could try to soothe her.

  He didn’t even care that she had puked on me. He didn’t even look up at me. He was full of concern, his eyebrows drawn together, his forehead wrinkled as he inspected her. But out of all that concern he held, none of it was for me. It was only pointed in Harper’s direction.

  I held my breath and walked straight to the bathroom, afraid to breathe in the smell. It was the one thing I hated most about being a mother. All the fucking vomit.

  While I wa
s in the bathroom, Jeremy made Harper a bottle. By the time I got out of the shower, she’d already fallen back to sleep. He was in our bed, plugging the video monitor back in.

  I froze as I was climbing into bed. I stared at the video monitor, at the perfect view right into Harper and Chastin’s cribs.

  How did I forget the fucking monitor?

  If he had seen what I was doing to Harper, he would have ended it with me.

  How could I have been so careless?

  I slept very little that night, wondering what Jeremy would have done to me had he caught me trying to save Chastin from her sister.

  Oh, my God. I double over in my chair, clutching my stomach. “Please…please…” I say out loud. Though I don’t know why or to whom I’m saying it.

  I need to get out of this house. I feel like I can’t breathe. I should go sit outside and attempt to clear my head of everything I just read.

  Every time I’m reading her manuscript, my stomach cramps from all the time I spend clenching it. I skimmed several more chapters beyond chapter five, but none were as horrifying as the chapter that detailed how she tried to choke her infant daughter.

  In the subsequent chapters, Verity focused mainly on Jeremy and Chastin, rarely mentioning Harper at all, which grew more disturbing with each paragraph. She talked about the day Chastin turned one, and she talked about when Chastin spent the night at Jeremy’s mother’s house for the first time at the age of two. Everything that had initially been “the twins” in her manuscript eventually dwindled down to just “Chastin.” If I didn’t know any better, I would think something had happened to Harper long before it did.

  It wasn’t until the girls were three that she wrote about both of them again. But as soon as I start the chapter, there’s a sharp rapping on the office door.

  I open the desk drawer and quickly shove the manuscript inside it. “Come in.”

  When he opens the door, I have one hand on the mouse and the other resting casually in my lap.

  “I made tacos.”

  I smile at him. “Is it time to eat already?”

  He laughs. “It’s after ten. It was time to eat three hours ago.”

  I look at the clock on the computer. How did I lose track of time? I guess that happens when you’re reading about a psychotic woman abusing her children. “I thought it was eight.”

  “You’ve been in here for twelve hours,” he says. “Take a break. There’s a meteor shower tonight, you need to eat, and I made you a margarita.”

  Margaritas and tacos. Doesn’t take much.

  •••

  I ate on the back porch while we sat in rocking chairs and watched the meteor shower. There weren’t very many at first, but now we’re seeing one every minute, at least.

  At one point, I moved from the porch to the yard. I’m on my back in the grass, staring up at the sky. Jeremy finally gives in and positions himself next to me.

  “I forgot what the sky looked like,” I say quietly. “I’ve been in Manhattan for so long now.”

  “That’s why I left New York,” Jeremy says. He points to the left, at the tail end of a meteor. We watch it until it disappears.

  “When did you and Verity buy this house?”

  “When the girls were three. Verity’s first two books had released by then and were doing really well, so we took the plunge.”

  “Why Vermont? Do either of you have family here?”

  “No. My father died when I was in my teens. My mother died three years ago. But I grew up in New York State, on an alpaca farm, if you can believe that.”

  I laugh, turning to look at him. “Seriously? Alpacas?”

  He nods.

  “How, exactly, does one make money raising alpacas?”

  Jeremy laughs at this question. “They don’t, really. Which is why I got a degree in business and went into real estate. I didn’t have any interest in taking over a debt-ridden farm.”

  “Do you think you’ll go back to work soon?”

  My question gives Jeremy pause. “I’d like to. I’ve been waiting on the right time so it won’t be a huge adjustment to Crew, but it never feels like the right time.”

  If we were friends, I would do something to comfort him. Maybe grab his hand and hold it. But there’s too much inside me that wants to be more than his friend, which means we can’t be friends at all. If an attraction is present between two people, those two people can only be one of two things. Involved or not involved. There is no in-between.

  And since he’s married…I keep my hand on my chest and I don’t touch him at all.

  “What about Verity’s parents?” I ask, needing the conversation to keep flowing so that he doesn’t hear how exaggerated he makes my every breath.

  He lifts his hands from his chest in an I-don’t-know gesture. “I barely know them. They weren’t around much before they cut Verity out of their lives.”

  “They cut her out? Why?”

  “It’s hard to explain them,” he says. “They’re strange. Victor and Marjorie, insanely religious to their core. When they found out Verity was writing thriller and suspense novels, they acted like she was suddenly denouncing her religion to join a satanic cult. They told her if she didn’t stop, they would never speak to her again.”

  That’s unbelievable. So…cold. For a second, I empathize with Verity, wondering if her lack of maternal instinct was inherited. But my empathy evaporates when I remember what she did to Harper in her crib.

  “How long did their estrangement last?”

  “Let’s see,” Jeremy says. “She wrote her first book thirteen years ago. So…thirteen years.”

  “They still haven’t spoken to her? Do they even know about what’s happened?”

  Jeremy nods. “I called them after Chastin passed. Left them a voicemail. They never called back. Then, when Verity had her wreck, her father actually answered the phone. When I told him what had happened, to the girls and to Verity, he grew quiet. Then said, ‘God punishes the wicked, Jeremy.’ I hung up on him. Haven’t heard from them since.”

  I pull a hand to my heart and stare up at the sky in disbelief. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” he whispers.

  We’re quiet for a stretch. We see two meteors, one to the south and one to the east. Jeremy points at them both times, but says nothing. When there’s a lull in both the conversation and the meteors, Jeremy lifts up beside me, onto his elbow, and looks down at me.

  “Do you think I should put Crew back into therapy?”

  I tilt my head so that I’m staring at him. We’re only a foot apart with him positioned like this. Maybe a foot and a half. It’s so close, I can feel the heat coming from him.

  “Yes.”

  He seems to appreciate my honesty. “Alright,” he says, but he doesn’t lower himself back to the grass. He continues to stare at me, as if he wants to ask me something else. “Did you go to therapy?”

  “Yes. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.” I look back up at the sky, not wanting to see the expression on his face after my next sentence. “After watching the footage of myself on that railing, I was worried that deep down, it meant I wanted to die. For weeks I tried to fight my sleep. I was afraid I’d hurt myself intentionally. But my therapist helped me realize that sleepwalking is unrelated to intention. And after several years of being told that, I finally believed it.”

  “Did your mother go to therapy with you?”

  I laugh. “No. She didn’t even want to talk to me about my own therapy. Something happened that night, when I broke my wrist, and it changed her. Our relationship, anyway. We always felt disconnected after that. My mother actually reminds me a lot of—” I stop speaking because I realize I was about to say Verity.

  “Reminds you of who?”

  “The main character in Verity’s series.”

  “Is that bad?” he asks.

  I laugh. “You really haven’t read any of them?”

  He lies back down on the grass, breaking eye contact with me
. “Just the first one.”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  “Because…it was hard for me to fathom that it all came from her imagination.”

  I want to tell him he’s right to be concerned, because his wife’s thoughts are eerily similar to her character’s thoughts. But I don’t want him to have that impression of her at this point. After all he’s been through, he deserves to at least be able to preserve a positive memory of his marriage.

  “She used to get so angry with me because I didn’t read her manuscripts. She needed that validation from me, even though she got it from everywhere else. Her readers, her editor, her critics. For some reason, my validation seemed to be the only validation she wanted.”

  Because she was obsessed with you.

  “Where do you get your validation?” he asks.

  I turn my head toward him again. “I don’t, really. My books aren’t popular. When I do receive a positive review or get an email from a fan, I never feel like they’re talking to me. Probably because I’m such a recluse and never do signings. I don’t put my image out there, so even though there are readers who love what I do, I still haven’t had the experience of being told to my face that what I do matters to someone.” I sigh. “That would feel good, I imagine. For someone to look me in the eye and say, ‘Your writing matters to me, Lowen.’”

  As soon as I finish that sentence, a meteor shoots across the sky. We both follow it and watch as it streaks across the water, reflecting in the lake. I stare at the lake, framing Jeremy’s head.

  “When are you going to start on the new dock?” I ask him. He finally finished tearing the old one down completely today.

  “I’m not building a new dock,” he says, matter-of-fact. “I just got sick of looking at that one.”

  I would make him expand more on that, but he doesn’t seem to want to.

  He’s watching me. Even though Jeremy and I have been making eye contact a lot tonight, it feels different in this moment. Heavier. I notice his eyes flicker toward my lips. I want him to kiss me. If he tried, I wouldn’t stop him. I’m not even sure I would feel guilty.