Mondays (The Wait Book 2)
Mondays
The Wait, Book 2
by Harper Bentley
Check out other titles by Harper Bentley:
The Powers That Be series:
Gable (The Powers That Be Book 1)
Zeke (The Powers That Be Book 2)
Loch (The Powers That Be Book 3)
Ryker (The Powers That Be Book 4)
Drake (The Powers That Be Book 5)
CEP series:
Being Chased (CEP #1)
Unbreakable Hearts (CEP #2)
Under the Gun (CEP #3)
The High Rise series
The Fighter
Serenity Point series:
Bigger Than the Sky (Serenity Point Book 1)
Always and Forever (Serenity Point Book 2)
True Love series:
Discovering Us (True Love #1)
Finding Us (True Love #2)
Finally Us (True Love Book 3)
True Love: The Trilogy: The Complete Boxed Set
The Wait series:
Thursdays (The Wait Book 1)
http://harperbentleywrites.com/
Copyright © 2017 Harper Bentley
Digital Edition: July 2017
Editors: Franca, Mel & Sam
Cover image licensed by Shutterstock
Cover Photo design by Jada D’Lee Designs
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior express, written consent of the author
Dedication
To Mom
Tu me manques
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1—Birdie
Chapter 2—Beck
Chapter 3—Birdie
Chapter 4—Beck
Chapter 5—Birdie
Chapter 6—Beck
Chapter 7—Birdie
Chapter 8—Beck
Chapter 9—Birdie
Chapter 10—Beck
Chapter 11—Birdie
Chapter 12—Beck
Chapter 13—Birdie
Chapter 14—Beck
Chapter 15—Birdie
Chapter 16—Beck
Chapter 17—Birdie
Chapter 18—Beck
Chapter 19—Birdie
Chapter 20—Beck
Chapter 21—Birdie
Chapter 22—Beck
Chapter 23—Birdie
Chapter 24—Beck
Chapter 25—Birdie
Chapter 26—Beck
Chapter 27—Birdie
Chapter 28—Beck
Acknowledgments
About the Author--Sneak Peeks
Prologue
I once read that you don’t fall in love with a person; you fall in love with how they make you feel when you’re with them.
And I think I agree with that.
See, I’d once felt amazing when I was with my husband Mason and I’d been deeply in love with him.
Then I didn’t and I wasn’t.
Then there was Beck. He’d made me feel safe, assured me that we’d make it through everything together no matter what.
He’d given me hope, made me feel as if I was it for him, and I’d fallen in love.
And then he’d changed his mind.
Two years later, I was still waiting for the bad feelings to overtake the good ones so I’ll stop being in love with him.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Annnnd still waiting.
I’m really not a whiner, but right now, the way I see it, life sucks. Men suck. Love sucks.
…
…
…
Okay, I’m a whiner.
Whatever.
I love my wife.
I do.
But after everything that’s happened, I knew I wasn’t in love with her. I’d tried, but if it’s not there, it’s just not there.
I’d stayed because I thought we could make it work and it’d also been the right thing to do. She’d been sick and she’d needed me. And I did make a promise to love, cherish, and honor her through sickness and in health, so there was that.
But it was getting harder and harder every day to stick to those vows after all she’d done, all she’d said to me, the drugs, the hateful words, the cheating.
It was a lot to take in; a lot to let go of.
Jesus. This all makes me sound like a dick, but I’m honestly not a bad person.
Even though I was in love with another woman.
Fuck.
I take it back.
I am a bad person.
Chapter 1—Birdie
You don’t get to choose who you love.
And that sucks.
Sucks, and any variation of it, had become my new favorite word. My best friend Jaden hated it. She said it made me sound crass. I asked her who the hell I was trying to impress by being un-crass. She just rolled her eyes.
I told her if she’d gone through everything I had, she’d like the word too.
Because losing my husband of not even two years to an inoperable brain tumor sucked.
Being a widow at age twenty-four sucked.
Having my husband cheat months before his death and getting the woman pregnant sucked a lot too.
And, sadly, the woman losing the baby a week after Mason’s death, and the pain in knowing that every part of him was now truly gone really sucked.
What sucked even more is I’d understood why he’d felt the need to “live it up” in his last months by doing those things.
And wasn’t I the altruistic one? Go me!
Anyway, that all just—you guessed it—sucked.
But I digress. Back to love and choosing.
I’d loved Mason Chapman from the first time I saw him our sophomore year of high school. I didn’t consciously choose to love him. I just did. I’d married him and dreamed of starting a family with him.
And then he was gone.
I also didn’t choose to fall in love with Beck Griffin. But my falling hadn’t been the same as with Mason. It had actually been quite unexpected. I’m sure my circumstances, as well as his, pushed us toward each other, seeing how we’d met when his wife was awaiting a heart transplant, he’d found out she was a drug addict and also that she’d cheated on him to get the drugs. Add everything together, and you’ve got two traumatized people looking for answers.
Then he, too, was gone.
After Beck left me, I had so many questions, wondering what had gone wrong. I know Jaden was as sick of my asking, “Why did he come into my life only to leave?” or “Do you think Beck still loves me?” and “Do you think he realized he loves his wife instead of me?” as much as I was. I’d asked the same damned questions ad nauseam the entire first year after Mason’s death—which, I think it helped me avoid dealing with, well, Mason’s death, and made me love my best friend even more for her patience with me. Of course, she’d had no better answer than I did, which was always, “Who the fuck knows?”
With all that being said, you know, the questions, the hurt feelings, the wondering, here comes the rid
iculous part: I hadn’t heard from Beck in two years yet I still yearned for him.
And the fact that I was still stuck in some weird suspended animation of still loving him…sucked.
Chapter 2—Beck
I was stuck.
And I’d been stuck for two years.
Funny how time flies when you’re having fun. That was me being facetious, if there was any fucking question about it.
I could admit I was bitter, because I’d had to put some things on the back burner since there’d been more pressing matters to attend to, namely, my wife’s health. Not that I begrudged her that. Jesus, no. I wanted her to live a fulfilling life, no question about it. It’s just that when your foundation is so completely shaken by confessions of drug use and infidelity by the person your entire world revolves around, well, it’s pretty tough to make a comeback.
The last two years of my life had consisted of taking Sonya to different appointments, mostly outpatient transplant centers the first year after her heart transplant where electrocardiograms, echocardiograms and heart biopsies were performed. Over the course of the last twenty-five months, I—along with Sonya’s Aunt Gina—had kept a watchful eye on Sonya’s dosages of a cocktail of immunosuppressants, corticosteroids, anti-hypertensives, and diuretics, as well as monitoring her diet and making sure she was getting regular exercise.
I didn’t regret my choice to stay. Sonya needed me, I was her husband, and it only made sense that I be there for her.
What I did regret was the way I’d left things with Birdie.
When shit had been falling apart for me, I’d heard Bernadette Chapman crying in a stairwell at the hospital and had comforted her, but I think I’d benefitted more from it. We’d surprisingly met again at a grief counseling session where we’d become friends, leaning on each other for support, which had eventually ended up with our falling in love.
I’d told her I wasn’t going anywhere, that I was in it for the long haul. Then fucking reality had set in and I knew I couldn’t leave Sonya, not when she needed me. I knew if I’d walked out on her, I couldn’t have looked myself in the mirror because I was a man of integrity and couldn’t put my own wants before everything else. I couldn’t have lived with that.
I’d always intended on talking with Birdie to explain that but never got the chance. The last time I’d seen her, she’d run, and I’d told myself it was all for the better.
But two years later, I was stuck. Stuck knowing that I still loved Birdie. Stuck, as I lay awake at night, the pain of wanting someone I knew I could never fucking have consuming me. Stuck still trying to convince myself that I’d done the right thing, but telling myself that she’d somehow benefited from what I considered an honorable, selfless act on my part.
Then a month after the transplant, my suspicions had been confirmed when I found out that Birdie had donated her husband’s heart to save Sonya, a heart that was now beating strongly in my wife’s chest.
And I knew that Birdie, not I, was the honorable one, the selfless one. And she’d done it because she’d loved me.
Chapter 3—Birdie
God, I hated Mondays.
I’d always felt that they were nothing but the pitiful pariah of the week. I mean, the weekend could be the most amazing, fantastic time ever, then stupid Monday came trudging along and shot that all to shit, like the black sheep bastard it was.
Not that I’d had any great weekends in a while, but whatever. I still thought Mondays should be outlawed.
So, yep, it was a Monday morning and I sat at my desk letting out a determined breath, eyes glued to my computer as I examined page after page of a local financial service firm’s ledger, looking for any suspicious financial discrepancies which could be telltale signs of possible embezzlement.
I’d been a CPA for going on three years when I’d taken and passed the Certified Fraud Examiner test last year, making my official job title Forensic Accountant. I really liked what I was doing now, finding potentially illegal goings-on within a company’s accounts, which was like figuring out a puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle, and there could be a villain at the end to boot! Oh, and I got to travel too! Whee!
Look. Accounting’s not too thrilling an enterprise, so anything that kept my mind occupied and also presented a mystery made me extremely grateful, because having no space left in my head to think about anything other than whether a number or two had been transposed was fabulous. And since Just Don’t Think about It had become my new catchphrase, well, for what it was worth, it seemed to be working.
When my phone dinged I took a break seeing as I hadn’t taken my eyes from the account I’d been scanning for going on thirty minutes.
Text Message—Mon, Jan 2, 8:27 a.m.
Jaden: You recovered yet? Me? Hell no. I just mixed a red plaid wallpaper with a pastel floral design in a mockup and thought they kinda looked pretty together o_O
I snorted. My best friend Jaden was a highly sought-out interior designer whose business had flourished so well that she was having to put customers on a twelve-month waiting list. And they were waiting, she was that good! I was so proud of her!
Saturday night, she and her husband Evan had hosted a New Year’s Eve party and, boy, had the alcohol flowed. Since I was only an occasional drinker, I hadn’t over imbibed and wasn’t feeling the effects two days later like she was. But they’d also been celebrating Evan’s landing a big account at the law firm where he worked, so they’d partied pretty damned hard.
Text Message—Mon, Jan 2, 8:28 a.m.
Me: Oh no! I’ll bet Martha Stewart just experienced a full-body shudder! :P
Text Message—Mon, Jan 2, 8:28 a.m.
Jaden: Funny
Me: That’s me. The funny one.
Jaden: So?
Me: So what?
Jaden: Have you heard from Evan’s friend yet?
Evan had invited Andy, one of his coworkers, to their party because he thought I’d like him. I was on an indeterminate furlough from dating/men/dudes/love/all that other shit for cripes’ sake and they both knew it! I mean, I’d played the game and lost, twice in less than two years, which was eight percent of my fricking life, so no more for me, thank you very much. But being the gracious friend I was—and after giving them both the evil eye—I went along with their stupid attempt of setting me up and gave Andy my undivided attention. He was okay looking, but when we started talking, and I told him about Jaden and I having gone the weekend before to a new club that had just opened, his true colors had shown. First of all, he’d looked shocked that we’d gone together without Evan, as if we were helpless without a man being there. Then he’d stated that if I were his woman—his exact words—he would’ve shown up to keep an eye on me to make sure I was “safe.” I’d laughed right in his face because I knew an insecure, controlling asshole when I saw one. When I called him on it, he’d banged a fist against his chest and replied, “I’m all alpha, baby,” which had made me cackle even harder at his misrepresentation of that fine breed of men. What an idiot. Narcissistic prick.
Text Message—Mon, Jan 2, 8:30 a.m.
Me: Oh, hell no. When he began mansplaining how I should be doing my job then told me that you and I shouldn’t be friends because you were a bad influence, I tuned him out
Jaden: He did not!
Me: Yep. Then he asked if I was submissive in bed ugh
Jaden: Good God
Me: When I mentioned I could be the aggressor at times, he shook his head and said that we’d kill each other if we were together. Then he told me he wasn’t emotionally available to be in a relationship right now before turning away and hitting on some quiet, mousy chick who gazed at him like he was some kind of god *eye roll*
Jaden: WTF What a jerk! And I’m SO not a bad influence!
Me: Well, there was that one time…
Jaden: Shut it!
Me: hahahaha
Jaden: Damn. Sorry, B
Me: Uh, tell Evan to PLEASE not set me up again, savvy?
Jaden: LOL Savvy. Lunch today? 1’ish?
Me: Can’t. I’m meeting with a CFO. There may be scandal afoot!
Jaden: You love this forensic shit, huh?
Me: I do! This time I wanna see some thieving bastard handcuffed and taken away
Jaden: Bloodthirsty much?
Me: Voracious ; ) I’ll call you tonight & let you know if I’m gonna be on the latest Cops, k? In the meantime, drink lots of Gatorade. It’ll hydrate you & make you feel better
Jaden: If I drink any more, I might turn into Usain Bolt
Me: I don’t even have a snappy reply to that, dammit
Jaden: You’re losing your touch, B
Me: My job is…Jamaican me…dull
Jaden: There’s my girl. I knew you had it in you
Me: I be jammin’ now
Jaden: Stop while you’re ahead. Love you. Talk later <3
Me: Love you too <3
Chapter 4—Beck
As an industrial engineer for a pharmaceutical company, I found my job challenging at times, so weekends were a great respite away from all the shit work I found myself doing on occasion. Therefore, Mondays used to be my worst days. Going back to work after two days of fun and relaxation made them pretty shitty. Now? I loved them because being back in the office after having been home all weekend was a goddamned lifesaver.
I know. I sound like an asshole. But hear me out.
I’ll first say that my wife wasn’t nearly the trooper I thought she’d be after her transplant.
Hang on and I’ll fucking explain.
Granted, she’d had a new heart put into her body, and I didn’t have any issues with administering her meds or going for walks almost daily with her in Central Park. Eating more healthily was good for both of us, and doing all the housework and running all the errands was a piece of cake. Obviously, these weren’t the problems.
No, my grievance was that in the last year she’d complained nonstop. I get it. I honestly get it. She’d had major surgery, and she damned well deserved to gripe afterward. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m saying is, it seemed as if I couldn’t do anything right. When I did laundry, I folded everything wrong. When I made dinner, I didn’t steam the asparagus correctly. When I started the shower for her, it was either too hot or too cold. If I encouraged her and told her I was proud of her, she’d tell me I wasn’t. When I suggested we go see a movie or a play, then I was an idiot for thinking she’d want to go out. When I asked if she was bored and might’ve wanted to go back to work, she’d told me that was a “stupid fucking idea.”