Read Online More Than A Maybe by Clarissa Monte - Free Book Online Page A

raise along the back of my neck. My breathing quickens involuntarily as the words tumble out:
    “Because I need beauty, Xavier. I need to see it all around me — in the mirror in the morning and everywhere else. I need to wake up and just know when I do that every new day will be packed full of wonderful things. Love. Energy. Excitement. I want to have fun, Xavier, days and weeks of actual jaw-dropping fun. I want fascinating friends, and delicious food, and back-to-back months of impossible sunsets. And when I get there, I want people to notice me. Look at me. Take one glance and know why I should be there. They’ll see me and they’ll whisper: She’s right where she belongs. ”
    Saying those words aloud feels like a cleansing. I’m breathing hard, my heart is racing, but I feel incredibly light, weightless, reborn. Whatever I’d been forced to keep inside is out of me now. I’ve just written the manifesto of my future. A declaration of independence from my past.
    I actually know what I want.
    And then I find myself wondering how it sounds. Fantastic? Ridiculous?
    I look at Xavier, half-expecting him to erupt in laughter.
    He doesn’t. He just stares at me with those eyes of his for a long, long time. He’s thinking, hard. About what, I can’t be certain.
    At last he speaks. “We’ve arrived.”
    “What?”
    “Your apartment,” he says, pointing out the window. “This is your building, correct?”
    I hadn’t even noticed. The car has indeed stopped — it’s somehow parked itself directly across the street from my building.
    “Oh,” I say, trying to steady my breathing. “Right.”
    I unfasten my seat belt and make to remove Xavier’s coat from my shoulders.
    He stops me. “Keep it for tonight. I have others.”
    “Are you sure?” I ask.
    “Absolutely. Keep it safe for me, until you see me again. And I will be seeing you again,” he says. He speaks the words as if the decision has already been made. The thought that I’ll actually be seeing Xavier again fills me with a glow of joy.
    He takes his phone from his pocket — the same exotic-looking black rectangle I’d seen earlier at the club. “I’ll need your number, of course.”
    I groan. “But I can’t get yours. My phone’s still back at Mirages.”
    “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll call once you get it back.”
    I tell him my number. He taps it into the phone, smiling at the look of curiosity on my face.
    “Nice phone. Another top-secret Xavier prototype?” I ask.
    He laughs. “Is it that obvious? It’s another little mystery, yes — but one I may unravel for you in the near future. But as for right now, I need one more thing.”
    “What’s that?”
    “A name.”
    I frown. “You know my name.”
    A straggly bit of my hair’s fallen into my eyes again. Xavier reaches forward, brushing it aside with his fingertips.
    “I know two of your names, actually. I don’t know which one you prefer, however.”
    I take a deep breath. “Veronica Kane,” I say. “Call me Veronica.”
    Xavier gives me a solemn smile as he enters the letters into his phone.
    “Very well. Goodnight, Veronica.”
    I open the door and step out into the night, the click-clack of my heels rapping a confident beat against the concrete. I want to look back at Xavier, so very much . . . but I force myself not to. I walk straight toward my building, holding out as long as I possibly can.
    When I finally turn around and look behind me, Xavier’s car is gone.

Chapter 4
    “You have GOT to be kidding me.”
    Jayla stares at me with her mouth open, a blend of shock and disbelief plastered across her face. She’s been holding her salad fork in the air for a good two minutes now, a lonesome crouton balanced precariously on the end. She simply hasn’t found a good time to put it in her mouth.
    We’re sitting at a cozy corner table together at an Olive Garden near my apartment. I’d checked my Gmail on our sputtering old Dell PC last night to find six