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Les Miserables.
Had Hope brought that in?
Was that why Luna was touching it?
And, maybe more importantly, was she reading it because of me?
Well, I was going to have to just see about that, wasn’t I?
And to my utter fucking delight, I found her in a hidden back corner of the library.
All by herself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hope
Okay well.
Really, why the hell did I go to the office again?
After about forty minutes of their shit-talking and the stale coffee, I was making excuses about needing to get back to work myself.
The problem was, I needed more than forty minutes to get my head clear.
So I went to grab some food since I hadn’t had a full meal, just bites of what I was making all day.
While I did that, I tried for what felt like the tenth time to get past the first chapter in the book I’d picked up because Val was named after it.
And not because Andres clearly liked it.
Frustrated, I drove to the library, figuring there was one person in my life that I could talk to about books without them getting all weird about me reading.
Luna didn’t care who you were or why you picked up a book, she always thought that it was the greatest thing in the world when someone wanted to give her favorite pastime a try.
She didn’t look up from her own book as I walked in.
I didn’t expect her to.
It wasn’t until I slapped the giant tome down on the desk in front of her and declared, “I hate this,” that she looked up.
I watched as the haze of fiction pulled back, planting her firmly back into reality.
She slow blinked at me for a second before her gaze fell down on the book.
“Oh,” she said, brows pinching.
“It’s twelve hundred pages. Twelve hundred. And I can’t get through the first chapter without feeling tired.”
“Well, classics aren’t usually where anyone would recommend you start a journey to loving reading,” she said, giving me a warm smile.
“Loving might be a stretch. I’m just… looking for something to, you know, pass the time with while on jobs,” I told her. And it was a small part of truth mingled with a lot of dishonesty.
“What made you start with this, though?” she asked, shaking her head as she fanned the pages with a finger. “This is a pretty cover,” she decided.
“If you want it, keep it,” I said. “And I don’t know. I heard something about the Val guy. It sounded interesting.”
“A man imprisoned for stealing bread, then rebuilding his life until he is a man of great wealth and respect is a universally satisfying and uplifting idea. I mean, if you overlook the teeth pulling and the prostitutes dying. And the poor, abused children. And, you know, all the revolution stuff…” she said.
“The… teeth pulling?” I asked.
“Oh, right, well, the prostitute doesn’t have money to feed her bastard daughter. So… she lets them pull her teeth for money. I know,” she said at my twisted face. “It was bad in the book. It was a little worse in the movie, to be honest.”
“So… you liked this?” I asked, waving toward the book.
“Yes. I mean, it wasn’t a fun read, but it was a good read. If that makes sense.”
“I think I need a fun read,” I told her.
“I read a lot of fun reads,” she said, nodding.
“What’s that?” I asked, nodding my chin toward her book. “More monster fucking?”
I watched as her eyes widened, feeling called out.
Luna loved all books. But she definitely liked her romances. Much like her mother. And a few of our aunts.
She didn’t, however, like people knowing what she read at work, so she’d long ago started making little slipcovers for her books, so no one saw the true covers. Which often had half-naked, embracing people. Well, female people. There were often alien and monster men.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re after,” she suggested instead of answering. “Do you want something crime based? Or investigative? Or would that be too much like work?”
“I think I’d like something with action. Not droning pages of hardship,” I said, grimacing at my book again.
“Okay, well, do you only want action?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want a book where all there is going on is some sort of mystery or case being solved? Or do you want a subplot?”
“What kind of subplot?” I asked.
“You know… maybe a romance? Some spicy scenes?”
“The absolute last thing I need in my life is a spicy scene,” I told her.
I mean, I swear I could still feel A’s tongue on my clit, for fuck’s sake.
And I wanted more.
“Give me something gritty and disgusting, if you have it,” I decided. I was pretty sure some solid body horror would cure me of the warm and tinglies over the freaking crime lord I was working for.
