Page 1 of Lost and Stolen Gods
Part One
Monsters aren’t real. That’s what parents tell their children to help them get to sleep, right? Not my grandmother. She always changed the subject when I asked. I guess she didn’t want to lie to me.
Chapter 1
EVERYTHING HAS AN EXPIRY DATE
Matt padded into the bedroom, still damp from the shower, white towel hanging tantalizingly low on his hips. His eyes lit up with expectation as they raked me over in my pretty new lingerie, bought especially for tonight, our fifth-year anniversary.
“You look hot as fuck,” he said.
Oh, I felt hot too. The kind of hot that was about to explode. Instead, I took a deep breath. “How long have you been fucking Carrie?”
His smile froze on his face. “What?”
“Howlonghave you beenfuckingCarrie?” My heart hammered against my ribs and my stomach trembled, but my voice was calm, as if I was asking a perfectly mundane question. Like,Hey, how do you like your eggs?OrDid you empty the dishwasher?Nothing like the toneof a woman who’d just read several sexually explicit messages between her fiancé and another woman.
I was calm. Good. This was good.
But Matt’s reply not only broke the camel’s back, it pulverized it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Leela,” he said.
In that moment, I knew what it meant tosee red.“I saw the fucking text messages, Matt! Read the most recent forty-seven. Not sure which is my favorite, though. it’s a toss-up betweenCan’t wait for you to ride my faceandWill you let me stick it up your ass again?”
My chest heaved. I was on my feet. Ready for battle.
His mouth worked for several seconds as if it had forgotten how to form words, and then he said, “You went through my phone?”
The urge to scream at him washed over me in a tidal wave, and I swayed on my feet, breathing to calm the rage that bubbled in my belly.
It passed, and when I spoke my tone dripped with bitter sarcasm. “Oh, I’m sorry, Matt, did I violate your privacy by accidentally seeing a dirty message from your side chick?”
A series of emotions crossed his beautiful, lying, bastard face as he tried to decide how to spin this.
“How long, Matt? How long have you been fucking her?”
His shoulders sagged, and my heart sank becausehe was about to fess up and slap a huge full stop on our relationship, and yes, of course it was over. I’d known that as soon as I saw the messages, but I guess there was a small, stupid part of me that had expected him to pull a valid explanation out of his ass.
Damn my stupid heart, I’d loved this man. Loved him enough to say yes to marrying him. Loved him enough to give up my studio apartment. Loved him enough to drop out of my media course and take two jobs to help pay for his masters.
Loved him enough to be a fucking sap, and now…now look…
“How long?” There was no fire in my tone any longer. I was done. Wanting it over now.
“Six months.” His words were a gut punch. “When you got the job at the restaurant on top of the admin position…You weren’t here.” He strode over to his chest of drawers and pulled out some clothes. “I barely saw you. I got lonely, and Carrie was…she was here.”
“Here with her legs open. Right. I get it.”
“It wasn’t like that. I?—"
“Icould have been here. But I was working to help pay offyourloans.”
His eyes flinched. “So you’re going to throw that back in my face? Getting the extra job was your idea.”
I was momentarily speechless at the lie. “Seriously? Don’t youdaretry to gaslight me.”
“Gaslight? I didn’t ask you to leave your apartment.”He tugged on a T-shirt. “I didn’t ask you to quit school and get a job. You offered, remember? You wanted to do it because you never stick at anything for long.” He pulled on PJ bottoms and yanked the towel off. “All these years it’s been one hobby, one project, one job to the next. You’re a jack of all trades but a master of none, and that…Leela, that’ssounattractive.”
