Verity

by Colleen Hoover

  We’re leaving the kitchen, but I don’t want to open my eyes until we’re alone behind a locked door. Verity isn’t ruining it for me this time.

  Once we’re in the master bedroom, he releases his grip on me and I slide down him, our lips slipping apart. He leaves me standing next to my bed as he walks toward my bedroom door.

  “Take off your clothes.” He says it without facing me, as he’s locking my bedroom door.

  It’s a command. One I’m eager to follow now that the door is locked. We watch each other undress. He takes off his jeans as I’m taking off my shirt, and then his shirt comes off with my jeans. I remove my bra as his eyes move over me. He’s not touching me, not kissing me, just watching me.

  So many emotions flood me as I remove my panties: fear, excitement, irritation, desire, trepidation. I slide my panties down my hips, over my legs, and then kick them off. When I stand up straight, I am on full display.

  He soaks me up with his eyes as he removes the last of his clothing. Something inside me shifts, because no matter how accurate Verity’s physical descriptions of him were, I wasn’t prepared for the full magnitude of his body.

  We’re both standing there, naked, our breaths exaggerated.

  He takes a step closer, his eyes on my face and nowhere else. His warm hands slide up my cheeks and through my hair as he brings his mouth down on mine again. He kisses me, soft and sweet, with just a tease of his tongue.

  His fingers trickle down the length of my spine and I shiver.

  “I don’t have a condom,” he says as he cups my ass and pulls me against him.

  “I’m not on the pill.”

  My words don’t prevent him from lifting me and lowering me to the bed. His lips circle my left nipple, briefly, then brush across my mouth as he hovers over me. “I’ll pull out.”

  “Alright.”

  The word makes him smile. He whispers, “Alright,” against my lips as he begins to push into me. We’re both so focused on connecting, we aren’t even kissing. Just breathing against each other’s mouths. I squeeze my eyes shut as he tries to fit his entire length inside me. It hurts for a few seconds, but when he starts to move, the pain is replaced by a pleasurable fullness that makes me moan.

  Jeremy’s lips meet my cheek, and then my mouth again before he pulls back. When I open my eyes, I see a man who, for once, isn’t thinking about anything other than what’s right in front of him. There’s no distant look in his eyes. It’s just him and me in this moment.

  “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about being with you?” It’s a rhetorical question, I’m assuming, because his kiss that immediately follows prevents me from answering it. He cups my breast while he kisses me. After about a minute of this position, he pulls out of me and rolls me flat onto my stomach. He enters me from behind, lowering his mouth to my ear as he pulls out. “I’m going to take you in every position I’ve imagined us in.”

  His words feel as though they settle in my stomach and catch fire. “Please,” is all I say.

  With that, he places a palm against my stomach and pulls me onto my knees, pressing my back against his chest without slipping out of me.

  His breath is warm against the back of my neck. I snake a hand up and grip his head, pulling his mouth against my skin. That position lasts about thirty seconds before his hands slip to my waist. He rotates me so that we’re facing each other and then slides me back onto him.

  I feel weak against his strength, his arms effortlessly moving me around the bed every few minutes. I realize, in all the times I’ve read about his intimacy with his wife, she always had to have some form of control over him.

  I relinquish all my control to him.

  I let him take me however he wants me.

  And he does, for over half an hour. Every time he seems close to release, he pulls out of me and kisses me until he takes me again, kisses me, repositions me, takes me, kisses me, repositions me. It’s a cycle I never want to end.

  Eventually, we’re in what I’m assuming is one of his favorite positions, him on his back, his head on a pillow, my thighs on either side of his head. But I’m not sure if we ended up in this position because of him or because of me. I’ve yet to lower myself onto his mouth because I’m staring at the teeth marks on his headboard.

  I close my eyes because I don’t want to see them.

  His palms are sliding up my stomach, to my breasts. He cups my breasts in his hands, and then he begins to slowly part me with his tongue. I let my head fall back and I moan so loud, I have to cover my own mouth.

  He seems to like the noise because he does the exact same thing with his tongue again, and the ecstasy that surges through me propels me forward until I’m gripping the headboard. I open my eyes, my mouth inches away from the headboard. Inches away from the bite marks Verity left behind from all the times he had her in this same position.

  When Jeremy’s fingers slide down my stomach and accompany his mouth, I have nowhere for my screams to go. With the position he has me in, I’m compelled to lean forward and stifle the sounds of my climax.

  I bite down on the wood in front of me.

  I can feel Verity’s teeth marks beneath mine. Different. Unaligned with my own. I bite harder into the wood as I come, determined to leave deeper marks than she ever did. Determined to think only of Jeremy and me every time I look at this headboard in the future.

  Verity is mostly confined to one room, but her presence looms in almost every room in this house. I no longer want to think about her when I’m in this bedroom.

  After I come, I pull away from the headboard and open my eyes, seeing the fresh marks I’ve left behind. Just as I run my thumb over them to wipe away my saliva, Jeremy pushes me onto my back and I’m suddenly beneath him again. He doesn’t even need to enter me to reach his climax. He presses himself against my stomach and I feel the warmth spilling onto my skin as his mouth finds mine.

  I can tell by his frantic kiss that this is going to be a long night.

  Our second round happened in the shower half an hour later. Our hands were all over each other, our mouths were one, and then he was inside me again, my palms flat against the shower wall as he thrust into me beneath the spray of the water.

  He pulled out and came on my back before washing me clean.

  We’re in the bed again, but it’s almost three in the morning, and I know he’s going to go back to his room soon. I don’t want him to. Being with him in this way is everything I imagined it would be and, somehow, I feel okay being inside this house when I’m also wrapped in his arms. He makes me feel safe from the things he doesn’t even realize are dangerous.

  He has me tucked against him, an arm wrapped around me as I lie against his chest. His fingers are tracing up and down my arm. We’ve been fighting sleep, asking each other questions. The questions have taken a more personal turn because he just asked me what my last relationship was like.

  “It was shallow.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure it was even a relationship,” I say. “We defined it that way, but it only revolved around sex. We couldn’t figure out how to fit into each other’s lives outside of the bedroom.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “A while.” I lift up and look at him. “It was with Corey. My agent.”

  Jeremy’s fingers pause on my arm. “The agent I met?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s still your agent?”

  “He’s a great agent.” I lay my head back down on his chest, and Jeremy’s fingers resume their movement down my arm.

  “That just made me a little jealous,” he says.

  I laugh because I can feel him laughing. After it’s quiet for a beat, I ask him a question I’ve been curious about. “What was your relationship like with Verity?”

  Jeremy sighs, and my head moves with his chest. Then he positions us so that I’m on the pillow and he’s on his side, making eye contact with me. “I’ll answer your question, but I do
n’t want you to think bad of me.”

  “I won’t,” I promise, shaking my head.

  “I loved her. She was my wife. But sometimes I wasn’t sure we really knew each other. We lived together, but it’s as if our worlds weren’t connected.” He reaches up and touches my lips, tracing over them with the tips of his fingers. “I was insanely attracted to her, which I’m sure you don’t want to hear, but it’s true. Our sex life was great. But the rest of it… I don’t know. I felt like there was something missing in the beginning, but I stayed and I married her and we started our family because I always believed that deeper connection was within reach. I thought I’d wake up one day and look her in the eyes and then it would click, like that mythical puzzle piece had finally snapped into place.”

  It’s not lost on me that he mentioned loving her in the past tense. “Did you eventually find that connection?”

  “No, not like I had hoped. But I’ve felt something close to it—a fleeting intensity that proved a deeper connection can exist.”

  “When was that?”

  “Several weeks ago,” he says quietly. “In a random coffee shop bathroom with a woman who wasn’t my wife.”

  He kisses me as soon as that sentence escapes him, like he doesn’t want me to respond. Maybe he feels guilty for saying it. For momentarily feeling a connection with me after trying to feel that connection with his wife for so many years.

  Even if he doesn’t want me to react to that admission, I feel something grow inside me, like his words sink into me and expand in my chest. He pulls me against him and I close my eyes, tucking my head against his chest. We don’t speak again before we fall asleep.

  I wake up about two hours later to his voice in my ear.

  “Shit.” He sits up and most of the covers go with him. “Shit.”

  I rub my eyes as I roll onto my back. “What is it?”

  “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” He reaches to the floor and then begins pulling on his clothes. “I can’t be in here when Crew wakes up.” He kisses me, twice, and then walks toward the door. He unlocks it, then pulls on it.

  The door doesn’t budge.

  He jiggles the handle as I sit up in bed, pulling the covers over my exposed breasts.

  “Shit,” he says again. “The door is stuck.”

  Something drops inside me, and I’m abruptly ripped from the pleasure of last night. I’m back in the moment, in yet another scenario where I feel desolate inside this eerie house. I shake my head, but Jeremy is facing the door so he can’t see me. “It isn’t stuck,” I say quietly. “It’s locked. From the outside.”

  Jeremy turns his head and looks at me, his face giving way to concern. Then he tries pulling the door with both hands. When he realizes I’m right and that the door is latched on the outside, he starts beating on it. I remain where I am, scared of what he might find when he finally gets that door open.

  He tries everything to open it, but then he resorts to calling out Crew’s name. “Crew!” Jeremy yells, beating on the bedroom door.

  What if she took him?

  I’m not sure she would have. She doesn’t even like her kids. But she likes Jeremy. Loves Jeremy. If she knew he was in this room with me last night, she’d probably take Crew out of spite.

  Jeremy’s mind hasn’t gone there yet. In his head, Crew is playing a prank on us. Or the lock somehow accidentally latched itself when he closed the door last night. Those are the only plausible explanations to him. Right now, he merely sounds annoyed. Not at all concerned.

  Jeremy glances toward the alarm clock on the nightstand and then beats on the door again. “Crew, open the door!” He presses his forehead against it. “April will be here soon,” he says quietly. “She can’t find us in here together.”

  That’s where his head is?

  I’m thinking his wife kidnapped his son in the middle of the night, and he’s worried he’s going to be caught fucking the houseguest.

  “Jeremy.”

  “What?” he says, beating against the door again.

  “I know you think it isn’t plausible. But…did you lock Verity’s door last night?”

  Jeremy’s fist pauses against the door. “I can’t remember,” he says quietly.

  “If by some bizarre chance it was Verity who locked us in here…Crew probably isn’t here anymore.”

  When he looks at me, his eyes are full of fear. Then, in one swift movement, he stalks across the bedroom and unlocks the window. He lifts it, but there are two panes of glass. The second one isn’t giving way as easily as the first. Without hesitation, he reaches to the bed and pulls a pillow case off of a pillow. He wraps his hand in the case, punches through the glass, kicks it, and then crawls out the window.

  Several seconds later, I hear him unlock my bedroom door as he passes it and heads for the stairs. He’s already in Crew’s bedroom before I make it out of the master. I hear him run across the hall to Verity’s room. When he makes it back to the top of the stairs, my heart is in my throat.

  He shakes his head. He bends over, clasping his knees, out of breath. “They’re asleep.”

  He squats, as if his knees were about to give way, and he runs his hands through his hair. “They’re asleep,” he says again, with relief.

  I’m relieved. But I’m not.

  My paranoia is starting to reach Jeremy.

  I’m not doing him any favors by bringing up my concerns. April walks through the front door moments later. She looks at me, then at Jeremy squatting at the top of the stairs. He glances up and sees April staring at him.

  He stands and walks down the stairs, not looking at me or April as he heads to the door, pulls it open, and walks outside.

  April looks from me to the front door.

  I shrug. “Rough night with Crew.”

  I don’t know if she buys it, but she walks up the stairs like she doesn’t give a shit if I’m telling the truth or not.

  I go to the office and close the door. I pull the rest of the manuscript out and begin to read. I have to finish this today. I need to know how it ends, if it even has an ending. Because I’m at the point now where I feel like I need to show this manuscript to Jeremy. He needs to know that he was right when he felt they never really connected. Because he didn’t really know her.

  Things aren’t right in this house, and until he mistrusts that woman upstairs as much as I do, I have a feeling something else is going to happen. The other shoe is going to drop.

  After all, this is a house full of Chronics. The next tragedy is already long overdue.

  So Be It

  It’s easy to remember everything about the morning Harper died because it only happened a few days ago. I remember how she smelled. Like grease. She hadn’t washed her hair in two days. What she was wearing. Purple leggings, a black shirt, and a knitted sweater. What she was doing. Sitting at the table with Crew, coloring. The last thing Jeremy said to her that day. I love you, Harper.

  Chastin had been gone six months that day. To the day. Which meant I had spent one hundred eighty-two and a half days building resentment for the child responsible.

  Jeremy had slept upstairs the night before. Crew cries for him almost every night, so for the last two months, he’s been sleeping in the guest bedroom upstairs. I tried to tell him it’s not good for Crew. He’s spoiling him. But Jeremy doesn’t listen to me anymore. His primary focus are his two remaining children.

  It’s strange how we have one less child for him to focus on, yet that somehow turned into requiring more of his focus.

  We’ve had sex four times since Chastin died. He can’t seem to get it up anymore when I try. Not even when I suck his dick. The worst part is that it doesn’t even seem to bother him. He could take Viagra, but he refuses. He says he just needs more time to adjust to life without Chastin.

  Time.

  You know who didn’t need time? Harper.

  She didn’t even go through an adjustment period after Chastin’s death. She never cried. Not even a single tear.
It’s weird. It isn’t normal. Even I cried.

  I guess it makes sense that Harper wouldn’t cry. Guilt can do that to a person.

  Maybe guilt is why I’m writing it all down.

  Because Jeremy needs to know the truth. Someday, somehow, he’ll find this. And then he’ll realize how much I fucking loved him.

  Back to the day Harper got what was coming to her.

  I was standing in the kitchen, watching her color. She was showing Crew how to color on top of another color to make a third color. They were laughing. Crew’s laugh was understandable, but Harper’s? Inexcusable. I was tired of holding in my anger.

  “Are you even upset that Chastin is dead?”

  Harper lifted her eyes to meet my gaze. She was pretending to be afraid of me. “Yes.”

  “You haven’t even cried. Not once. Your twin sister died and you act like you don’t even care.”

  I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. Funny how the kid Jeremy believes can’t express emotion can bring on the tears when she’s being called out.

  “I do care,” Harper said. “I miss her.”

  I laughed at her. My laughter brought on the actual tears. She scooted her chair back and ran up to her bedroom.

  I looked at Crew and flicked a hand in Harper’s direction. “Now she cries.”

  Figures.

  Jeremy must have passed her upstairs, because I could hear him knocking on her door. “Harper? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

  I mimicked him, using a squeaky child-like voice. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

  Crew giggled. At least I’m funny to the four-year-old.

  A minute later, Jeremy walked into the kitchen. “What’s wrong with Harper?”

  “She’s mad,” I lied. “I wouldn’t let her go play by the lake.”

  Jeremy kissed me on the side of my head. It felt genuine and it made me smile. “It’s a nice day out,” he said. “You should take them to the shore.”

  He was behind me, so he didn’t see me roll my eyes. I should have thought of a better lie to excuse Harper’s tears, because now he wanted me to take them outside and play with them.