The Haunting of Tess by Veronica Bale

Author:Veronica Bale [Bale, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-17T22:00:00+00:00

***

Rhys had fallen asleep almost immediately after climax. He’d grinned, kissed Tess on the forehead, laid back against the pillow with a deep sigh, and within seconds he was snoring softly. Tess lay beside him, one arm flung over her head, staring at the ceiling. From her peripheral vision, she could see the rise and fall of his chest, crested by silver moonlight from the room’s single window.

Outside, the city was quiet. Only the occasional sound of a passing car competed with Rhys’s snores for space in the room.

She had lain like this in Adam’s bed less than a month ago, the scent of his body lingering on hers the way Rhys’s did now. She had broken Adam’s heart less than a month ago; she doubted Rhys would care that he’d never see her again. Adam had texted a week ago, two single words that begged her to respond: Miss you.

She hadn’t.

Wouldn’t… couldn’t. He was too good for her. Best she not shred open a healing wound.

When she’d started sleeping with him, it had been for convenience. At least for her it had been. For him… Tess always suspected that Adam had a crush on her. But she’d been Brad’s girlfriend, and then fiancée. When the restlessness nagged at her, it was easy to turn to him rather than prowl the clubs looking for a Rhys. Or a Jake. Or a… God, too many names. It had been wrong and she’d known it then. Wrong for Adam. She should have been a better friend to him and never let it go there in the first place.

Tess resolved to write him an apology at some point in the near future. She owed him that at least.

At the very least.

Her breakup with Brad had been something she’d discussed at length with Dr. Khoury when Tess first started seeing her. They’d stripped it down to the bones, exposed the tendons and fibres like a flayed corpse. While she had learned a lot about herself from the exercise, Tess wasn’t sure in the end what good it had done her.

“So, it’s over with Brad?” Dr. Khoury had asked in her satiny voice the day after Tess’s pending marriage had crashed and burned.

Tess sat on the oversized armchair, one leg crossed over the other. Involuntarily, she glanced down to her naked ring finger.

“Dead as the VCR.”

“How did it happen?”

“I don’t know. People like DVDs better, I guess.”

“Funny,” Dr. Khoury said drily. “Did you call the wedding off?”

“He did. I told him about the others. I’d say it killed any chance of a reconciliation pretty good.”

“Is that what you wanted to happen when you told him about the others?”

Tess stared at the indent where her engagement ring had been. Examined the shiny patch of flesh that curved downwards to her pinky.

“Yep.”

“And is that why you started sleeping with other men in the first place?”

Angrily, Tess clenched her fist and pounded it on the arm of the chair. “We’ve been over this already. I sleep with other men because it’s fun.

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