Burning Moon by Jo Watson Read Free Book Online Page A

I’d never worn a pair of skinny black jeans in my life! (My thighs were too big.)
    I mean, I had a “Caribbean Caramel” spray tan; long, shiny (and may I add protein-enriched) blond hair with no split ends; and a French manicure. I listened to Taylor Swift and didn’t take antidepressants.
    Perhaps he felt obliged to be polite since I was putting him up for the night?
    The honeymoon suite was, quite frankly, the most beautiful hotel room I’d ever been in. I briefly wondered if Damian had seen better on the numerous expensive holidays he’d no doubt enjoyed with his rich family.
    It was spacious, equipped with sleek, modern finishes—and beyond comfortable. It was, however, far more open plan than I’d initially imagined. It did have a living room, but one that wasn’t very separate from the bedroom…something that would surely prove to be Awkward (again, with a capital A ), since I’d offered Damian the couch.
    More awkward, though, was the totally open-plan bathroom, complete with outdoor shower and sunken Jacuzzi bath. Someone had already filled the bath and sprinkled it with rose petals. A feeling crawled up from my gut again as I watched the delicate petals glide on the surface of the water. My bouquet had been made of roses, as were the centerpieces on the beautifully appointed tables. I thought about Michael again, and this time we weren’t rolling in beach sand.
    No, this time I had taken a photograph of us, cut his face out of it, and stuck it on a voodoo doll, and I was stabbing him in the crotch with a pin! (Maybe I did need antidepressants.)
    I was angry. Very fucking angry! Where the hell was he? What was he doing right now? He probably didn’t even know that I was on our honeymoon, and he certainly didn’t know that a strange man was with me. Suddenly I hoped he would find out and die from the excruciating pain of jealousy. Or didn’t he care enough? Did he still love me?
    My face must have betrayed my feelings, because Damian slid up beside me and looked at the bath.
    “I hate those bloody things, they always get stuck in the drain,” he said, bending down and scooping the petals out.
    Although I would never have guessed it, or even predicted it, this was one of the kindest things anyone had ever done for me.
    “I’ll just chuck them outside,” he said, exiting with an armful of wet petals. He stopped at the door and turned. “I’ll go and have a dip in the sea while you bathe. I know you said you wanted one.” He paused. “You’re going to be fine, Lilly.” And then he was gone.
    This guy didn’t know me from a bar of soap, and yet he had this uncanny ability to say, and do, the right things at exactly the right time.
    Michael had known me for years, but I guarantee you he would never have worked out that staring at floating red petals was making me feel homicidal. But Damian had.

Chapter Five
    I met my fiancé, Michael, ex-fiancé I mean, when I was still in college. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of youthful optimism and my half-full glass runneth over.
    Michael and I met at a very pretentious play, which might as well have been written in Greek, because I wasn’t able to extrapolate a single syllable of sense out of it. The play had been written, directed, and acted in by my stepsister—my mother briefly married a theater director when I was five.
    The marriage had lasted only eight months, but I still remain best of friends with my stepsister, Stormy-Rain. (The story goes that Stormy was literally born in the rain. I’m not sure how true this is, but I always loved to tell everyone that.)
    People are surprised that Stormy and I are so close, because she is the complete antithesis of me; for starters, she wears a lot of knitted scarves and crushed velvet (even in summer). She lives hand to mouth as a theater actress, director, astrologer, and tarot card reader. She has also been known to fire juggle on occasion.
    Personally, I think we were forced to bond during