Page 59 of Bitter Rival

After internally debating it for all of two seconds, I knock softly and enter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Daisy

Beckett is slouched in the wingback leather chair squeezing the stress ball in his hand with his eyes on the ceiling. A book is open, face down on his lap.

He looks over at the doorway and gets to his feet, shoving his hand through his hair. “Are you okay?”

I nod, my gaze lowering to his gray sweatpants and plain white T-shirt then back up to his face. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just got thirsty.” I hold up the bottle as if I need to show proof. “Why are you still awake?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He shrugs. “Just have a lot on my mind, I guess.”

“Like what?” I ask, boldly venturing farther into the room and stopping in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “Maybe it will help to talk about it.”

“At one in the morning? I doubt it.”

I run my finger over the spines. Hunter S. Thompson. Burroughs. Faulkner. And laugh under my breath when my finger lands on a Voltaire novel. “So you’d rather just sit there brooding over it, huh?”

“I don’t brood,” he scoffs.

“Oh, yes, you do. You brood, sulk, skulk, glower, glare, scowl.”

He leans his shoulder against the far wall, crossing his arms and ankles. “Your command of the English language is impressive.”

“Not bad for a girl who could barely read.” I meant for it to sound lighthearted but fail.

“That wasn’t your fault,” he says. “Did you ever get help for your dyslexia?”

I shrug. “Yes and no. I eventually learned how to read and grew to love it.” Robert gave me that. He was the one who got me the help I needed. And through reading I got to experience the joys and wonders of other worlds.

I loved being transported to Narnia, to Manderley, to pirate ships, and Gothic mansions.

What I didn’t love was textbooks and learning by rote.

“But the schools I went to never served me, so I dropped out. I never made it past the eleventh grade.” I look over at him to see his reaction. He doesn’t look shocked by my admission. His face is shuttered. Blasé.

I continue moving toward him, one tiny step at a time, my hand lovingly caressing the volumes on the shelves.

Tolstoy. Kundera. Garcia Marquez.

“I bet you got straight A’s, didn’t you? I bet you were the valedictorian.”

“I was.” He starts from his end of the bookcase and mirrors my actions, running his fingers over the spines.

If we keep going, we’ll eventually meet in the middle.

“I was driven to excel academically because I had a chip on my shoulder and something to prove.”

“You? A chip on your shoulder? I can’t even imagine that.” He laughs. A low, rumbling sound that makes my stomach do cartwheels.

I tilt my head, curiosity getting the best of me. “What were you trying to prove?”

“That I was better than everyone. Better than the assholes who bullied me at boarding school. Better than my father. My best defense was to rise above. To be smarter. Richer. More successful.”

I can’t picture him being bullied. Just a few days ago, I would have called him the bully. But after the way he reacted tonight it makes sense. It’s not unusual for people who were bullied to turn into bullies themselves.

“So when you grabbed that guy by the throat tonight…You didn’t only do it for my benefit, that was for you, too?”

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