I’m still staring at the three of them, waiting for confirmation when, suddenly, Kenji speaks with a start.
“Uh, yeah—no, uh, no problem,” he says.
“Certainly,” says Castle.
And Warner says nothing at all, looking at me like he can see through me, and for a moment all I can remember is me, naked, begging him to join me in the shower; me, curled up in his arms crying, telling him how much I miss him; me, touching his lips—
I cringe, mortified. An old impulse to blush overtakes my entire body.
I close my eyes and look away, pivoting sharply as I leave the room without a word.
“Juliette, love—”
I’m already halfway down the hall when I feel his hand on my back and I stiffen, my pulse racing in an instant. The minute I spin around I see his face change, his features shifting from scared to surprised in less than a second and it makes me so angry that he has this ability, this gift of being able to sense other people’s emotions, because I am always so transparent to him, so completely vulnerable and it’s infuriating, infuriating
“What?” I say. I try to say it harshly but it comes out all wrong. Breathless. Embarrassing.
“I just—” But his hand falls. His eyes capture mine and suddenly I’m frozen in time. “I wanted to tell you—”
“What?” And now the word is quiet and nervous and terrified all at once. I take a step back to save my own life and I see Castle and Kenji walking too slowly down the hall; they’re keeping their distance on purpose—giving us space to speak. “What do you want to say?”
But now Warner’s eyes are moving, studying me. He looks at me with such intensity I wonder if he’s even aware he’s doing it. I wonder if he knows that when he looks at me like that I can feel it as acutely as if his bare skin were pressed against my own, that it does things to me when he looks at me like that and it makes me crazy, because I hate that I can’t control this, that this thread between us remains unbroken and he says finally, softly,
something
something I don’t hear
because I’m looking at his lips and feeling my skin ignite with memories of him and it was just yesterday, just yesterday that he was mine, that I felt his mouth on my body, that I could feel him inside me—
“What?” I manage to say, blinking upward.
“I said I really like what you’ve done with your hair.”
And I hate him, hate him for doing this to my heart, hate my body for being so weak, for wanting him, missing him, despite everything and I don’t know whether to cry or kiss him or kick him in the teeth, so instead I say, without meeting his eyes,
“When were you going to tell me about Lena?”
He stops then; motionless in a moment. “Oh”—he clears his throat—“I hadn’t realized you’d heard about Lena.”
I narrow my eyes at him, not trusting myself to speak, and I’m still deciding the best course of action when he says
“Kenji was right,” but he whispers the words, and mostly to himself.
“Excuse me?”
He looks up. “Forgive me,” he says softly. “I should’ve said something sooner. I see that now.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“She and I,” he says, “it was—we were nothing. It was a relationship of convenience and basic companionship. It meant nothing to me. Truly,” he says, “you have to know—if I never said anything about her it was only because I never thought about her long enough to even consider mentioning it.”
“But you were together for two years—”
He shakes his head before he says, “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t two years of anything serious. It wasn’t even two years of continuous communication.” He sighs. “She lives in Europe, love. We saw each other briefly and infrequently. It was purely physical. It wasn’t a real relationship—”
“Purely physical,” I say, stunned. I rock backward, nearly tripping over my own feet and I feel his words tear through my flesh with a searing physical pain I wasn’t expecting. “Wow. Wow.”
And now I can think of nothing but his body and hers, the two of them entwined, the two years he spent naked in her arms—
“No—please,” he says, the urgency in his words jolting me back to the present. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just—I’m—I don’t know how to explain this,” he says, frustrated like I’ve never seen him before. He shakes his head, hard. “Everything in my life was different before I met you,” he says. “I was lost and all alone. I never cared for anyone. I never wanted to get close to anyone. I’ve never—you were the first person to ever—”
“Stop,” I say, shaking my head. “Just stop, okay? I’m so tired. My head is killing me and I don’t have the energy to hear any more of this.”
“Juliette—”
“How many more secrets do you have?” I ask. “How much more am I going to learn about you? About me? My family? My history? The Reestablishment and the details of my real life?”
“I swear I never meant to hurt you like this,” he says. “And I don’t want to keep things from you. But this is all so new for me, love. This kind of relationship is so new for me and I don’t—I don’t know how to—”
“You’ve already kept so much from me,” I say to him, feeling my strength falter, feeling the weight of this throbbing headache unclench my armor, feeling too much, too much all at once when I say “There’s so much I don’t know about you. There’s so much I don’t know about your past. Our present. And I have no idea what to believe anymore.”
“Ask me anything,” he says. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know—”
“Except the truth about me? My parents?”
Warner looks suddenly pale.
“You were going to keep that from me forever,” I say to him. “You had no plan to tell me the truth. That I was adopted. Did you?”
His eyes are wild, bright with feeling.
“Answer the question,” I say. “Just tell me this much.” I step forward, so close I can feel his breath on my face; so close I can almost hear his heart racing in his chest. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Honestly, love,” he says, shaking his head. “In all likelihood, I would have.” And suddenly he sighs. The action seems to exhaust him. “I don’t know how to convince you that I believed I was sparing you the pain of that particular truth. I really thought your biological parents were dead. I see now that keeping this from you wasn’t the right thing to do, but then, I don’t always do the right thing,” he says quietly. “But you have to believe that my intention was never to hurt you. I never intended to lie to you or to purposely withhold information from you. And I do think that I would have, in time, told you what I knew to be the truth. I was just searching for the right moment.”
Suddenly, I’m not sure what to feel.
I stare at him, his downcast eyes, the movement in his throat as he swallows against a swell of emotion. And something breaks apart inside of me. Some measure of resistance begins to crumble.
He looks so vulnerable. So young.
I take a deep breath and let it go, slowly, and then I look up, look into his face once more and I see it, I see the moment he senses the change in my feelings. Something comes alive in his eyes. He takes a step forward and now we’re standing so close I’m afraid to speak. My heart is beating too hard in my chest and I don’t have to do anything at all to be reminded of everything, every moment, every touch we’ve ever shared. His scent is all around me. His heat. His exhalations. Gold eyelashes and green eyes. I touch his face, almost without meaning to, gently, like he might be a ghost, like this might be a dream and the tips of my fingers graze his cheek, trail the line of his jaw and I stop when his breath catches, when his body shakes almost imperceptibly
and we lean in as if by memory
eyes closing
lips just touching
“Give me another chance,” he whispers, resting his forehead against mine.
My heart aches, throbs in my chest.
“Please,” he says softly, and he’s somehow closer now, his lips touching mine as he speaks and I feel pinned in place by emotion, unable to move as he presses the words against my mouth, his hands soft and hesitant around my face and he says, “I swear on my life,” he says, “I won’t disappoint you”
and he kisses me
Kisses me
right here, in the middle of everything, in front of everyone and I’m flooded, overrun with feeling, my head spinning as he presses me against the hard line of his body and I can’t save myself from myself, can’t stop the sound I make when he parts my lips and I’m lost, lost in the taste of him, lost in his heat, wrapped up in his arms and
I have to tear myself away
pulling back so quickly I nearly stumble. I’m breathing too hard, my face flushed, my feelings panicked
And he can only look at me, his chest rising and falling with an intensity I feel from here, from two feet away, and I can’t think of anything right or reasonable to say about what just happened or what I’m feeling except
“This isn’t fair,” I whisper. Tears threaten, sting my eyes. “This isn’t fair.”
And I don’t wait to hear his response before I tear down the hall, bolting the rest of the way back to my rooms.