Monica (3 page)

He put his hands on my cheeks and brushed my lashes with his thumbs. I let my eyes flutter closed.

“You can’t leave me until I destroy you.”

“If you destroy me, I’ll never leave.”

“Regularly.” He took out a monogrammed hankie and held it up. “Blow.”

I blew my nose. He pinched and wiped for me, as if I were a child.

He kissed my lips, taking them against his, owning them with tenderness and confidence. I let his tongue into my mouth, its soothing warmth, exploring me as if for the first time. The tenderness with which he kissed me was in such contrast to the beating I’d just received, that I broke down in tears again. He held me and rocked me in the soundproof studio for what seemed like hours, saying sweet things in my ear. I felt so good, so calm, so loved.

“You’d better cancel dinner,” he said. “You’re going to need some serious after care.”

“You think the guys would notice if I ate standing up?”

“Come home, and I’ll feed you in bed.”

“Yes, Jonathan. Yes to everything.”

“And you shall have everything.”

***

This is it.

This is our goodbye to Monica and Jonathan for about a year. However, there’s a good chance this story will be wedged somewhere in the middle of
Coda
, which will be an epilogue of sorts.

I finished this series with
Sing
. I gave these two a happily ever after and moved on. But my readers felt I’d left some stuff out. They thought the conclusion was too open-ended. What did they decide to do about children? How were they coping with Jonathan’s shortened lifespan? Questions remained about Kevin, Brad, Eileen….on and on.

So, I will produce a
Coda,
but I cannot do it right now. The series is complete. They're happy. I need to move on. The emotional space these two beasts take up makes it impossible for me to work on anything else. So unless I can cover Jonathan and Monica’s story within the scope of the Drazen Sisters stories, I’ll make a brief return to
Songs of Submission
 after 
Songs of Corruption
 is complete. Just enough to write
Coda
.

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contents

jonathan

monica

jonathan

monica

This is it.