East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) Read Free Page A

the face and told him he was the most
chicken of shits to walk the face of the earth, on both sides of the
Atlantic!?
    The answer, sadly, was too
clear for me to remain level-headed about it. Three
months... Damn ...
What a waste of time. The answer...was that Conall was still mine,
in my mind, as was Travis Maddox of Beautiful Disaster , and Dean Holder
of Hopeless . They
were all mine, still, and none of them ever left me.
    But Conall had left me. He'd left me
good. And he hadn't even bothered to be a man about it and tell
me.
    And in that moment, staring at the plain
black uniform in my hands, in a stinking bathroom made even more
smelly by the hops and malt covering my attire, I felt like I'd
suddenly let something go. And in my mind, I heard a mirror crash.
And I was through it.
    I hefted the clothes in my
hands, sighed, and looked meaningfully at Dani. She stood there
akimbo, her left Converse shoe tapping, her eyes burning the life back into
me.
    "Well?" she urged.
    "Well, I think I better get
changed before hottie over there decides to hit on you or
something..."
    She pointed at a cubicle like an old matron
shouting at a miscreant boy who just kicked mud on a little girl's
shirt. I saluted her and said, "Yes, ma'am."
    "You bet I'm your ma'am. And, for your
information, if Mr. Skyscraper out there asked me for a shag, I'd
tell him he didn't stand a chance with me. Because it is now my
goal to have him break you in, finally. This saving yourself for
Mr. Wrong is all bullshit, Ms Caivano!"
    Her final statement ("...break you in...")
made me hunt the cubicles. Thank God they were empty!
    But those cubicles also made me think, just
one more time before I left that bathroom, of Conall. And of my
statement to him just before he'd left New York:
    But I know one thing. No
matter who I fall in love with, or who I spend the rest of my life
with, or if you and I work out, or if you suddenly decide you like
silicone blondes or... guys , even... No matter what, there's
one thing I've decided I always want to have. And that is that you
will be my first. No matter what happens. I want that.
    He never got to be that, not all the way.
Actually, I still wanted that. If I was being completely honest
with myself. I wanted Conall to be my first, all the way. There'd
been a connection there, a bond, a link between us...
    A level of trust that I
couldn't get out of my mind. It wasn't infatuation. I knew it
wasn't. There'd been something deeper between us and, somehow,
despite every sun, moon, and star of the heavens proving me wrong,
I somehow still believed that Conall had not lied to me. That he hadn't just left me for
no reason.
    I'd been giving him time, time that he
clearly needed. That's why I was here.
    It made no sense, his disappearance, the
reduced texts, fewer phone calls until, finally, only a few weeks
prior, total silence.
    There was an explanation, and he needed time
to give it to me. I knew this. On some level. Somewhere.
    And I was right. Only I didn't know it
then... Not consciously.
    I didn't know it on the night I first spoke
to Dorian.
    On the night I met Dorian,
I thought — no, I had convinced myself, against my own good judgment — that Conall
was a coward, a liar, craven.
    I should've stuck with what I believed in my
heart. Things would have all been so much simpler...
-2-
    Guardian-Angel-Dani took my
beer-covered clothes as I walked out the bathroom into the merry
atmosphere so common of English pubs and that I'd come to count as
my comforter each night. That, and the seagulls which woke me every
morning (yes, even in winter), as well as the salt-licked air I
breathed on every jog I took at about six A.M. — cold or not — kept
me going. (OK, I confess, the jogs weren't every morning. Not even
close... But the salty air had come to give me a sense of comfort.)
    A man bellowed in the back, laughing at some
or other joke. The smell of beer on wooden tables was never fully
gone and, even though I didn't drink the