Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con #3)(53)

I push the book back to him. “Read it to me.”

“You can’t be serious.”

I yawn. “I’m tired. I worked all day. You’ve lounged around playing video games.” Which he doesn’t dispute, because I know him well enough by now. I’m not sure what kind of video games he plays, though. I close my eyes, curling up in the corner of the couch, and rest my head on the cushions. “Please?”

For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything, but then I hear him flip open the book, the pages buzzing between his fingers, until he settles on the page where we last left off, and he begins to read in a soft, steady cadence. The adventure of Amara and General Sond spills softly from his mouth, and I’m not sure when I drift off to sleep, but when I do my head is filled with stars.





A GUST OF WIND SHAKES THE TREES, and I watch as yellowing leaves scatter across the yard. It’s early afternoon, and Rosie’s father’s already gone back to the apartment again. Rosie slept in this morning—her father told us not to wake her, since she hasn’t slept in for a long time. “Not since my wife…well, you know,” he had said with a shrug. “She always makes me coffee in the morning, like Holly used to. I think she thinks she has to take care of her old man now.” I remembered that her mother passed away, but I didn’t realize how recent it was. Only a year.

I tap out “I Like Big Butts” on the grand piano in the living room, because I can’t think of a more ridiculous song to play on a five-thousand-dollar instrument, putting my ten years of music lessons to excellent use.

I’m working out the notes to round thing in your face you get—when my phone, sitting on the bench beside me, pings with a text.

    DARIEN (3:47 PM)

—Hey man, it’s been a while.



Yeah, no kidding. It feels like an eternity. I keep tapping away at the notes, adding a bass chord as I get more acquainted with the song.

…with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your—

My phone pings again.

    DARIEN (3:48 PM)

—You okay?



Just two words. But they’re enough to thoroughly ruin my fun. I should text him back the truth, that I’m having about as much fun as anyone else in the lowest circle of hell, but when I pick up my phone I can’t do it. We made our choices, and this is how the dominoes fell. He made the right ones, I made the not-so-right ones.

Instead, I turn off my phone, and as I close the cover on the piano keys, the Star Wars theme echoes through house. Elias’s ringtone, but he’s out running errands. His phone is vibrating on the edge of kitchen.

He forgot it—again.

I stare at it, because the first thing I think is that it’s my mother. Or my manager. Or a reporter. Or my mother.

And none of them I want to talk to.

The call goes to voice mail, and my anxiety begins to ebb. I shove the bench underneath the piano and start for the stairs when—

His phone goes off again.

What if it’s important? a voice inside me whispers.

My stomach flips into a knot and I make for the counter and swipe up on Elias’s phone. It’s not my publicist, or my manager, or a journalist. It’s…

My mother.

I haven’t talked with her since our fight, and I have strategically avoided her every single time she’s tried to call me, and despite everything, I do miss talking to her, even as I try to remember why I’m so bitter about it all to begin with.

Because she sided with my stepfather. She sent me here, to nowhere. To hide me away because she, like my stepfather, is ashamed of me.

That’s the part of all of this I don’t like thinking about.

“Um, Vance?” I glance behind me. Rosie stands in the doorway to the living room with her suitcase and her bookbag. Her hair is pulled behind her head in two short pigtails, and she tugs on one of them nervously. “Dad just called. He said the apartment’s back in tip-top shape! I hate to ask, but Elias has gone to the farmer’s market, so…do you think you could take me home?”

I turn around and send my mother—again—to voice mail. “Your chariot awaits, Princess.”





HE LEADS ME OUT INTO THE GARAGE, where a simple economy car sits. I buckle myself into the passenger seat. It surprises me—I didn’t think he’d be caught dead in anything less than an Aston Martin, but I suppose that would stick out too much in this town.

Out on the main street, trees unfurl around us, curling up toward the sky in a tunnel. He flicks on the brights, the radio murmuring soft pop songs.

He shifts in his seat. “So, if I liked that book…which one would you suggest next?”

I give him the strangest look. “Seriously?” I chew on the inside of my cheek to keep myself from smiling.

“…What?”

“I’m sorry—this is just so weird. I never would’ve thought that I’d ever be in a car with you, asking me for book recs.”

“Well, I will admit this is a first for me as well. But…” As he coasts to a stop at the stoplight, he tilts his head, frowning, “it’s not a bad thing, yeah?”

“No, it’s really not. Well, what kind of books do you like?”

“Ones that aren’t boring.”