The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

“Good night, Nate.” I watched the broad stretch of his back leave before remembering to send him with some of the files.

I hopped out of bed. “Don’t forget to take some light reading.”

He turned, shook his head and waved me off once. “Keep it, I’ll be back tomorrow night for a bedtime story.”

And that’s when Nate wrapped an iron cage around my heart.

PAST

Zara - Summer 1964

“Holmes, Sherlock Holmes.” I held the tiny finger bone below my nose like a mustache.

Nate rolled his eyes and swiped the folder from my hands. “Whatcha bring me tonight?”

I settled beside him on the iron bench that overlooked the cliff and crashing waves below. “The state did an investigation here, that’s why the boarding school was finally shut down.”

“What year was that?”

“Almost thirty years ago this summer.”

“Interesting, my dear Watson.” Nate arched an eyebrow at me.

“Oh, I’m definitely the Sherlock in this operation.”

“No way.” He shook his head. “It’s been a month and this is the best you’ve brought me?”

I shrugged. “It’s all from just the one file box in one room, I want to get a copy of Mother’s key made so I can explore the other rooms but she never parts with it.”

“She hardly leaves her room anymore,” Nate said. “She sends Walton to check on the kids in the cellar and she’s had you heating frozen chicken broth for dinners. What the hell is going on in there?”

“She’s working on her book.”

“It’s going to be terrible.”

“You don’t know, maybe it’s not.”

“It is. She’s a horrible human, she must have a horrible story to tell.”

“That isn’t true.”

“It’s not?” He arched an eyebrow at me.

“It’s just the book. Once it’s finished—”

“Bullshit,” he seethed.

“Listen, she’s not dumb. She knows the health inspector or whoever could stop by at any time, she has six new kids living here, someone will be out to follow up.”

“Will they though?” He flipped the folder back and forth in his hands. “She’s smarter than we both realize, and she knows those inspectors won’t come. Shelter Island doesn’t even have a full-time position for that, that’s why I got away with sleeping on the beach in a tent most of the summer. They didn’t have anywhere else to put me, other than jail.”

I swallowed, wondering if he had been to jail. “Have you been?”

He shook his head. “The sheriff brought me in once for stealing bread and lunch meat from the deli, but let me go after he paid for it.”

“What happened to your parents?” I asked before I could think to stop myself.

“Mom left for the city two years ago and hasn’t been back, Dad works at the marina. I don’t see him much.”

“Why don’t you live with him?”

“If you met him you wouldn’t be asking that.” His words hung heavy in the night air. I didn’t know what to say, because despite the wild upbringing I’d had with Zahara Usher, I’d always had a roof over my head.

“I want to be a beach boy someday.”

“A beach boy?” I laughed, grateful for his shift of topic.

“Like a California Beach Boy, singing and surfing all day without a care in the world. Do you think people like that really exist?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, I haven’t met any and Mother doesn’t let us listen to anything other than classical music.”

“Are you telling me you haven’t heard ‘Good Vibrations’?”

“I’ve heard it here or there out in the shops, but not really in full, no.”

“So sad, what’s to become of you Zara Usher?”

“That’s not my last name,” I bristled.

“What is it then?”

“Technically I’m a Thornberry. Even though William and Mother never married, she wanted me to be a part of both legacies. Zara Usher Thornberry is the name on my birth certificate.”

“And your mom’s name?”

“Zahara Usher.”

“Weird name for a weirder person.” Nate bumped his shoulder against mine and winked. “You, on the other hand, are a sight for sore eyes, Zara Usher Thornberry.” A slow grin worked across his face and I knew then he was teasing.

“Is there ever a serious bone in your body?”

“Only one.” His grin widened as he held up my tiny finger bone and wiggled it. “And I brought it along for your creepy Sherlock the Shakespearean bedtime story, m’lady.”

We broke into laughter, wind hurling the sound of us over the cliff and into the black abyss.

“No one’s ever treated me as nice as you do.” Nate’s words broke the silence.

I felt his shoulder brushing mine.

I felt his eyes searching my profile, the tingling awareness at my neck that every part of him seemed to throb in time with my own heartbeat.

“You’re the one that’s too nice—please, with a mom like that I’m always the outcast.”

Nate caught my chin with his thumb and index finger, our eyes aligning. “I like outcasts.”

My heart thrummed as he drew closer, his lips hovering just out of reach with mine. I crammed my eyes closed, wishing he’d kiss me with every cell in my body.

“Outcasts tell the best stories.” His words were measured and warm. And then his lips pressed against mine and my heart exploded. He pressed tenderly against me first, before one of his palms came to rest at my cheek, the pad of his thumb caressing my cheekbone as he pressed more firmly at the seam. I let him in, parting my lips for a breath before his tongue was dancing with mine in slow, steady strokes.

I nearly melted when his other hand slipped under my dress, fingertips drawing up my thigh. I moaned softly, then shamed myself for being so stupid and needy in front of him. His palm reached my hip, fingers dragging along the elastic of my panties and making me quake with anticipation.

He lingered slowly, ending our kiss with breathless pants before he asked, “I want to be with you.”

I nodded eagerly, not fully knowing what he meant and not caring. “I want you too.”

His fingers pressed into the flesh at my waist and then in another movement he’d laid me on