Page 71 of Wait With Me
“Yeah…Katie,” Green Shirt adds, “explain to him how I was your boyfriend for two years and still basically live with you.”
“You do not live with me, Dryston!” she shouts, her own hand fisting at her side as she stomps her foot.
My face twists up in confusion as I turn my shoulders to face her. “Why is he calling you Katie?” I grind through clenched teeth that feel like they could crack any moment. “Your name is Mercedes.”
“Her name is Kate Smith, moron. Mercedes is basically the hooker name she made up to write those god-awful things she calls books.”
Now I’m done. I’m done with this douche. He’s said the last asshole thing I can handle.
I reach across the table and yank him up onto his feet by the collar of his shirt. Sidestepping, I wrench him right up to my face so hard, he has to stand on tippy toes to just reach my chin. “Call her a fucking name again, and you will regret it.”
The dude is like a limp sack of noodles in my arms, his eyes half-lidded as his lip curls up and whispers, “You can have the trashy cunt. She’s not suitable for mixed company anyway.”
My eyes fly wide, and before I know it, I rear back my arm and send my fist flying into this fucker’s pompous nose. A satisfying crack vibrates against my knuckles, and blood sprays out all over his face.
He howls in pain and crumples to the ground, his hand covering his nose. “You fucking ape!” he shouts, his voice cracking at the end. “I think you broke my nose!”
“Good,” I grind through clenched teeth as Sam wraps his arms around me and hauls me backward. My shoulders rise and fall rapidly as I suck big gulps of air and stretch and flex my fingers on the hand that made contact.
“You won’t be saying good when I fucking sue you!” Green Shirt bellows from the ground on his knees.
But his words don’t even register in my mind as I slide my gaze to the left and see Mercedes standing there with her hands over her wide open mouth. Obvious tears have sprouted in her eyes.
Are those for this douchebag?
She looks up at me and drops her hands, her chin quivering uncontrollably, and she croaks my name. “Miles.”
She moves out to touch me, and I yank back from her and shake off Sam’s grip. I pin her with a serious stare. “Don’t talk to me.”
“Miles!” she exclaims with a shout. “I need to explain.”
“Explain this?” I roar, pointing down at her idiot of an ex weeping into a cocktail napkin. “Explain why I punched a guy for a girl whose name I don’t even know?”
A sob bubbles up her throat, and I can’t even look at her anymore. I turn, powering my way through the crowd of people who have all pressed in around us. I pass Lynsey near the bar, and she looks at me like a whipped puppy, but thankfully says nothing.
As I make my way through the doorway toward the stairs, my mind begins racing. You think you fucking know someone. You think maybe you’ve been wrong all along, and there are good people out there who can be honest and up front with you. Real.
But then you find out you were wrong , so fucking wrong that you have the bloody knuckles to prove it.
I pause in the stairwell and send my bloodied fist flying into the concrete wall. It does zero damage to the wall, but it takes the sting off the pain in my chest, and that’s better than nothing.
“Goddamnit,” I growl, shaking my hand, my knuckles cracking painfully into each other as I stretch my fingers out.
“Miles, wait,” Mercedes voice echoes in the dark stairwell, illuminated only by a sconce on the wall.
I’m tempted to ignore her and keep going, but I catch sight of her fumbling down the stairs in a pair of tall wedge sandals. She looks like she could fall at any second, so I stop just to get her to stop chasing me.
“What, Mercedes?” I growl, my hand clutching the metal railing so hard, it aches. “Or is it Katie?”
She stops two steps above me, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her blue eyes are sad when she croaks, “It’s Kate. I was going to tell you.”
“When?” I ask, my voice ragged now that my adrenaline has slowed and I’m staring up at the woman I’ve bared my soul to these past several weeks. I look straight into her eyes and add, “After I fell in love with you?”
She sucks in a sharp, shaky breath and replies hurriedly, “I’m still the same person, Miles. I’m as much Mercedes as I am Kate. Mercedes is still my name, it’s just used on my books.”
“It’s your pen name?” I ask, and she nods her confirmation. “Then why fucking lie about it?”
“I don’t know!” she replies with a flick of her hands. “Because with my ex, I got used to hiding that part of me. But with you, I didn’t have to do that, not ever. Kate Smith is who I am when I’m not telling people about what I do. One of our first nights together, you told your sister about me. That’s something I’ve never experienced before, Miles.”
