I wondered if Julian’s story was something horrific, and the stunning Riva yacht he had me boarding was for the sole purpose of softening the blow.

After grabbing breakfast to go at a charming little pastry shop, we took Emmett’s truck to a glittering white marina, where I found myself standing before a gleaming, forty-foot black and mahogany speedboat I could’ve sworn I’d also seen in my dreams before.

“If this is your way of keeping me distracted while you confess your secrets, I don’t appreciate it, because it’s kind of working,” I said, hardly able to help a smile as I gazed at Julian. He had his Persols pushed up, giving me a clear view of those eyes looking bluer than ever. I wasn’t sure if they were reflecting the water or his light blue button down, but they were striking enough that I almost tripped while getting onto the boat.

Without flinching, Julian caught me.

“Actually.” He squeezed my hand tight till I was solidly on my feet. “The boat is for the purpose of distracting me.”

“Oh.”

Oops.

I didn’t consider till now that it might actually be hard for Julian to talk about himself or his past. It wasn’t my instinct to imagine that anything was hard for him. That was why the bookmarked French book was so charming and curious to me.

At least it was until I saw the love letters – or whatever they were.

“How’d you learn to drive a boat?” I asked, in the seat next to Julian’s as he navigated out of the dock.

“My grandfather taught me.” He looked like some classic Hollywood movie star with his hair lightly slicked back, his sleeves pushed up and his Persols back on. I decided on a cross between young Clint Eastwood and prime James Dean.

“Your mother’s father?” I asked.

“My father’s father. He taught me how to steer a boat, how to line a fishing rod – he also taught all eight grandkids how to use our chest voices when heckling opposing outfielders. So we’d be loud enough to actually distract them.”

The sun bounced off Julian’s shades as he smiled, his hand on the wheel and his posture relaxed as the boat accelerated to knife through the shimmering blue water. It was a breathtaking sight.

“Your grandfather sounds like fun."

“He was. He was also ‘that guy.’ Similar to your dad.” Julian glanced at me to catch my big smile. “Yeah, he was loud and happy and animated. He asked my grandmother on a date about two minutes after he first spotted her at the stadium, and when he took her out that night, he told her he was going to marry her, have three kids with her, and buy the Empires for her.”

“And he did?” I grinned. “I mean the three kids part.”

“Yes. That he got right. Same with the marriage part, obviously. He was a lower-middle class kid from Brooklyn, but he wound up making most of his money through property rentals, and he did try to buy the Empires twice before, but his bids were rejected.”

“Oh no. Was your grandma holding him to the whole thing about buying her the team?”

“Not at all. She teased him every day about how she didn’t believe he’d ever be able to do it, and that he was batting six sixty-seven on promises.”

“Lord. Such a baseball family,” I smirked. “They sound too cute. Is your dad also ‘that guy?’”

“No, my dad would be more like me.”

“Serious and scary?”

Julian laughed. “Yes, but less scary. A little nicer. No – a lot nicer.”

“Really? Tell me about him.”

“Well, he did inherit some of my grandfather’s romantic side. To the point that I grew up thinking all kids celebrated Mother’s Day with the same fanfare as Thanksgiving and Christmas. We used to spend the entire month before the day planning her surprise. We would get all her favorite foods, decorate the entire house with her favorite flowers.”

“Which were?”

“Ranunculus flowers,” Julian said, his perfect hair blowing slightly in the wind. “The name is misleading. They’re really beautiful.”

I exaggerated my surprise to tease him.

“Huh. Julian Hoult likes flowers?”

“Hard not to with the way I grew up. Every April of my life revolved around flowers,” he grinned. “Dahlias were also high on the list. Hydrangeas, too. Mom liked all the harder to find colors, so Emmett and I usually started ordering a month before Mother’s Day. Dad was in charge of planning and executing the menu for the night, and Emmett and I were on ordering and décor.”

“And by Emmett and you, you mean…”

“Just me,” Julian laughed, his eyes crinkling adorably behind his sunglasses. “There were these big, chocolate-covered strawberries that were Mom’s favorite, and timing that order so they stayed fresh would always cause Emmett to melt down. There was always a point where he got overwhelmed and meditated by coloring and making cards.”

“Oh, no! Poor Emmett.” I couldn’t stop grinning as we zipped fast now under the sun and through the water, my mind filled with images of baby Emmett having a total breakdown while baby Julian made calls and spreadsheets in preparation of the Hoult Family Mother’s Day. “So, is this where Julian Hoult’s famous organizing and planning skills originated?”

“Possibly. Though my father did start me on business classes around middle school. He said all my grandfather’s real estate was purchased on a whim, when property was cheap, so it was unreasonable to believe that his kind of success would just replicate or fall in our laps. We had to earn it.”

“Ah. Now I see how you and Dad are more alike,” I nodded, glancing behind us to see how far we’d gone. At this point, the marina was a sparkling white dot far, far away. “I take it Emmett’s more like Mom?”

“No, my mom is a good balance of fun and serious. Emmett would be more like my crazy grandfather. Not a surprise at all that he was always my grandparents’ favorite grandchild.”

“Really? It wasn’t you?”

“I was a close second,” Julian chuckled. “I was a bit fickle. I wasn’t easy to amuse at all, and that just kills the fun of playing with kids.”

I giggled at the image of Julian playing with children. Again, not something I’d imagine for him, but clearly, he was full of more surprises than I gave him credit for. Or he was just far more human than I could ever really fathom.

“So Emmett was the happy, smiley kid.”

“Shocking, right?” Julian said dryly despite his grin. “I’ll admit he was hilariously cute as a kid. Pretty much never stopped smiling – thought anything you said or did was fucking amazing. My grandpa used to bring him around the bleachers when Emmett was a toddler, and he’d just introduce him to complete strangers. He just thought there was no chance someone at an Empires game would prefer to actually watch the game than meet this ‘fine young gentleman.’”

“Oh, God. That’s actually too cute.” I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest as I watched Julian. Maybe it was the sun hitting his brilliant smile, but it looked like he was beaming at the mere thought of his family.

“Meanwhile, my grandmother was glued to the game. She loved her grandkids, but if there was baseball going on, she wasn’t taking her eyes off the field for anything.”

“So, she came here from Germany, went straight to a game to get a feel of Americana, and then became the most hardcore baseball fan in your family?” I clarified, completely charmed.

“Absolutely,” Julian replied. Oh, yeah. The man was beaming. “She likes to pull my President of Baseball Operations aside every once in awhile, and give her some pointers on who to sign during free agency. She’s almost ninety now, but still keeps a mental Rolodex of player contracts and salaries throughout the league, just to think of possible trade scenarios. The players think she’s terrifying. They call her Rosemarie The Reaper.”

“Oh my God.” I had to take my sunglasses off to wipe at the tears squeezing from the corners of my eyes from laughing so hard. “Are you sure it’s not your grandma you take after, Julian?”

“You know, it’s gotta be a mix of both her and Dad,” Julian decided with a little smile. “I’m a reflection of them. Emmett’s a reflection of Grandpa.”

“In that case, your entire family had to be your grandparents’ favorites. There’s no way they weren’t.”

“Oh, we were. And we still are. Though for different reasons now, probably.”

I stilled as I remembered that there was a reason we were here on this boat. There was a part of this story that wasn’t about flowers and baseball and strictly good times. I knew that part was coming as I watched Julian’s curved mouth fade back to a line.

“I was twenty-three when my grandpa’s cancer spread to his bones. I remember me and Emmett and my parents spending a lot of time in hospice with him and Grandma. We would just play cards, or talk, or watch the game, but it was good. It felt like we were taking our time to say goodbye, and we were leaving off on some laughter and good conversation. We took the time to make new memories instead of just talking about the old ones. Though we did that too. It was just a nice, peaceful time, all things considered. Both my grandparents accepted what was happening, and for the most part, they were at peace with it.

“But my aunts and uncles and cousins visited occasionally to quickly ask how my grandpa was feeling before interrogating him about the will. They were afraid he was leaving his best real estate to my father, because he was the favorite.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered.

I had only heard about these family battles over wills and money. I didn’t have a big enough family myself to see it happen, and I really couldn’t process that things could ever get so ugly among blood – especially over something as trivial as money.

“Yeah, they were shameless. And horrible,” Julian said evenly.

There he goes.

I could always tell when a topic upset Julian. He always carefully extracted any and all emotion from his voice, carrying on with a calm that was strictly uninterpretable. The only tell was in his eyes, but today, he had those covered. In that sense, shades were like his superhero cape.

“My dad wanted to keep peace with his siblings,” Julian said. “He felt like my grandpa deserved to see his family whole before he went. And I resented that. I hated keeping quiet when these people came barreling in during our last conversations with him. We would be talking about something that was making Grandpa laugh when they’d storm through demanding answers about the will. My cousin, Paul, was the worst of anyone. He was the oldest, he was married, and he had his second child on the way, so he was hell-bent on inheriting some real estate. He pushed everyone aside to badger my grandfather till he was in tears. I don’t remember what I did, but I snapped. I remembered everyone screaming for me to stop, and I know I at least dragged Paul out of the room before I choked him out. Emmett pulled me off of him before I could do any more damage. But really, the damage was done. Everyone was screaming and crying. My dad pulled me aside and tore me a new asshole for treating family like that.”

“But what about the way they were treating their family?” I argued, my own voice shaking with the fury I felt over Julian’s asshole cousin forcing his grandfather to cry on his deathbed. “How could he possibly care about just the property when your grandfather was about to – ”

I cut off because I didn’t want to say it. Julian gripped the wheel of the boat tight.

“I know. Nothing made sense to me that day, and I felt like I was helpless for once. Everyone was furious with me, and I couldn’t stick around without doing more damage, so I talked alone with my grandfather. He said he loved me, he understood, and he knew I needed to just get away for a bit – to cool off. He said that we’d say goodbye now. Just in case.”

I hugged my knees tight against my chest. I knew where this story was going, and I couldn’t take it. My heart was twisting and turning as I waited for Julian to just say it, but obviously, he needed time.

For awhile, it was just the silence and the sound of the motor as the yacht continued sailing toward the skyline.

“I took my bike, actually. It was my preferred getaway, too,” Julian finally said, and with the kind of strained smile I knew was for the purpose of bracing your emotions. Inching closer to him, I dared to reach for his hand. Before I could tell myself to pull back and give him some space, he took my hand in his. I stared down at our fingers entwined, a little amazed by the notion of my touch providing him comfort.

“Where did you go?” I asked softly.

“Nowhere in particular,” he said. “I just rode. I rode for probably five hours to calm myself down. I was close to Martha’s Vineyard by the time my heart was beating normally again. But when I checked my phone, I had more than fifty missed calls, texts and voicemails.

I closed my eyes for a second. “Your grandfather passed?” I wasn’t sure if he’d even heard my whisper of a question, but then he gave my hand a squeeze.

“No,” he said. “It was my dad. He had a massive heart attack an hour after I left.”

I covered my mouth.

I couldn’t speak for a moment.

Several moments, actually. My heart pounded like it had grown ten sizes, and I could almost feel how rocked Julian had been standing next to his bike all those years ago, in a different state, helpless and broken by the news. I had no idea how he could even go on talking, but he did. His voice was mostly steady, but his grip choked the wheel as he steered and explained everything.

His dad had passed that very night, and by the next, his heartbroken grandfather left them as well. And of course, the Hoults were in shambles – at least Julian’s grandma, mom and brother were.

The real estate wound up going to his vile aunt, uncle and cousins. His mother obviously didn’t care. She had never wanted it in the first place. And now, all she wanted was her husband who was suddenly gone.

Apparently, she took her grief out on her son.

“She’s apologized profusely since, but she blamed me then. She said I drove my father to that point. And I did. You can’t deny that,” he said, knowing well I was about to try. “You really can’t,” he repeated with the most faintly detectable tremor in his voice. “I shocked him, and I angered him so badly it killed him. I didn’t get to say goodbye to him. We just left off. It still feels like we’re up in the air, and wherever he is, he’s always wishing he could say something to me.”

My heart was completely broken for him. I could tell from the way he cleared his throat that he was choked up, and more than anything, I wanted to just crawl into his lap and give him the biggest hug, but he was still driving. I took a moment to sort through my fractured jumble of thoughts.

“You have to know he’s proud of you, Julian,” I murmured. “How could he be anything but that? You put his early business lessons to work, you founded your company – you even followed through on your grandfather’s promise to buy the New York Empires. That’s crazy, Julian. You and the people around you might be used to your success and achievements at this point, but as an outside party, let me tell you that I am constantly in awe of you. You are unstoppable, and considering the unreal accomplishments you’ve had so far, I can’t imagine a greater honor than being the motivation for your success, the way your family is.”

Julian said nothing but squeezed my hand hard, rubbing his thumb over my palm.

“You told me yesterday to stop blaming myself and trying to repent for the past,” I pointed out gently, “so I’m telling you now to allow the same for yourself. A part of you has to know you deserve it. You gave your grandmother the opportunity to be Rosie The Reaper to a bunch of big pro ballers. Your grandfather is definitely somewhere laughing with your dad about that,” I said, a little smile touching my lips as I watched Julian grin.

“They’re definitely pleased about that.”

“Exactly.”

Julian smiled for a bit, and I let myself enjoy it. But I knew there was more.

“My guilt doesn’t end there,” he finally broke the silence. I took in a deep breath.

“What else happened?”

“I was estranged for years from my mother and Emmett.”

I raised my eyebrows. Judging from his relationship with Emmett now, it was hard to believe that Julian was ever anything but close to him. But evidently, there was a period where they had gone years without speaking.

“I went home for my father and grandfather’s funerals, but I moved overseas shortly after. Just weeks after. There was a sudden wall between me and the rest of my family. My mom couldn’t look at me. She didn’t want to. Emmett claimed it was because I reminded her too much of our father, and not because she blamed me for his death, but I knew that was a lie. So, I moved to Stockholm.”

“Stockholm? As in Sweden?” I said with surprise.

“Yes. People don’t associate the city with being the tech hub it is, but it was there that I wound up starting the company that would become Hoult Communications. It was Hoult Media at the time, and it offered mobile content like news, sports scores, et cetera. Once we developed a mobile payment technology, the company surpassed a billion dollars in value. I was twenty-seven when I sold it.”

“Holy shit.” I let it all process for a bit as the boat slowed significantly, humming along the water now. “So you spent four years away from your family,” I murmured. My mom was exhausting, and my dad was a lot of talking to handle at a time, but I couldn’t imagine going even a year without seeing them.

“It wasn’t easy. But as time went on, the wall between us just got higher and higher. More and more miscommunications built up. My mother can be incredibly proud and hard headed, and when I asked if I could send her money, she took it as a slight. She thought I was trying to buy her forgiveness for abandoning them when this entire time, I swore she was the one who abandoned me. I was so angry for so long, and I missed my dad. A lot. I had always grown up telling myself I would be exactly like him, so with my mother and my relationship on the rocks, and Emmett just doing whatever he could to keep her afloat, I filled the void with a woman I worked with. Elizabet. Or Liz.”

“I’m going to guess she’s French.”

“Yes. She was something of an assistant to me at Hoult Media.”

“You were in love with her?” I asked, doing my best to sound casual despite how fast my heart was beating.

“I thought I was. In reality, I just wanted to replace the family I lost, and I was hasty. I picked someone I thought was important to me because I conflated her significance to me with the success of my company. She was in the office every day watching me grow it from a startup, and my perception of her was skewed thanks to that. After we split for good, I made a rule for myself.”

“Zero tolerance. Never sleep with or date an employee,” I recited so dryly Julian looked at me with a laugh.

“Yes.”

“Split for good?” I recalled what he said. “What caused the final split?”

From Julian’s pause and the way he drew a palm over his jaw, I knew we’d reached another painful peak in his story.

“Liz said for a long time, it was easy to pretend I loved her the way she loved me. But then Lucie came along, and she saw what real love looked like in my eyes.”

I swallowed. “Lucie?” I repeated, a small chill running over my arm just before Julian answered.

“My daughter.”

It felt like my organs had all crashed to my feet before he clarified.

“She isn’t biologically mine,” Julian said, looking at me. “Liz got pregnant with her around the time of one of our breaks, but I specifically didn’t do anything to confirm paternity when Liz said the child belonged to me. I wanted a kid. I wanted that family. I raised Lucie till she was four years old.”

“Oh my God,” I breathed. It was a much more significant amount of time than I had thought. “How old were you?”

“Twenty-five,” Julian replied. “From the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine, I was a dad. And a fucking good one. I was the father my own father raised me to become, and I was proud of myself. I adored Lucie in a way I didn’t know was possible. But Liz couldn’t handle it. Lucie and I were closer than she was to either of us. Lucie had anxiety. Panic attacks.”

Julian glanced at me, and my reaction to the explanation I now had for that night. He had been able to put air back in my lungs the night at the pool with Turner and Carter Roth, because he’d spent years using the same tricks to soothe the girl he raised as his daughter.

“I was the only one who could calm her down, and Liz resented that,” Julian said. “She resented that she was second best to the both of us. She resented that the love Lucie and I had together upstaged anything we had for her, and it was a painful daily reminder.”

“That sounds hard,” I couldn’t help but murmur. It really did. There was nothing more hurtful than being unloved and unwanted, and I knew well that being reminded of it every day was like torture following torture. A revolving door of pain.

“It had to be hard. I didn’t even realize myself how much it had to hurt,” Julian said, remorse in his voice. “I was just so hell-bent on having a family again. I was transfixed with Lucie, and with being a father. It felt like through the universe, my dad and I were somehow sharing a connection again. I knew exactly what he had felt when he was raising Emmett and me.” Julian paused, as if suddenly losing his breath. I squeezed his hand. “Lucie would look at pictures of my dad and say ‘Grandpa,’ and it was the best feeling. I was so over the moon, I didn’t know Liz was unhappy. I had no idea I was hurting her constantly.” He swallowed. “And I had no idea that she was plotting to hurt me back.”

A pang of fear hit my chest. “How?”

“I woke up one morning in December, and they were gone. Bags packed. Just gone. Liz didn’t tell me where she went with Lucie, and it wasn’t till months later that I found out they moved to France, where Liz is from.”

“Biarritz?” I guessed.

“No, but close by. She had always talked about going there with her family growing up, and how it was always a dream, and she wanted to raise her children there.”

“So you built the resort,” I murmured, staring ahead of us in pure, stunned awe.

“Yes. Before all the renovations and additions, it started out as a home. A big one. Liz said if I somehow showed her my love, maybe she would come back. Just maybe. So I designed a fucking mansion for her. At least I said it was for her.”

“But it was for Lucie.”

“Yes.”

The heat of the sun was almost unbearable now.

I was speechless.

I had been so sure Julian Hoult was unfeeling, made of steel. But for this little girl, he had turned himself inside out and worked tooth and nail – all for the fighting chance to perhaps see her again.

And apparently, he did. But it was short-lived.

Liz had returned to Julian, and they had spent all of four months in the Biarritz home before she detected the lie of his love and disappeared once again.

“They live somewhere outside of Paris now. Liz told me she would make sure I’d never be close to Lucie again. She promised me she would stop speaking English to her, and place her in a strictly French-speaking school.”

My jaw dropped at the unbelievably calculated cruelty of it all.

“So Lucie would be unable to communicate with you?”

“Yes. She writes letters here and there, and I provide financial support here and there. But the relationship we once had is gone, and now that she’s almost nine, I doubt she really remembers it. Which is okay. It’s less painful for her.”

The anguish in his voice was more than evident now, so I let him be for awhile. I needed the quiet myself, too, because my image of Julian had just been completely rocked. He wasn’t just cold, hard and efficient.

He was a million layers of complexities that made my heart actually ache for him more. He knew grief and suffering all too well – he just kept it always locked tightly inside of that ironclad exterior.

Except for now. With me.

The wind tousled my hair as I climbed halfway into his lap.

“Hey.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. He turned his eyes to me for a few seconds, studying me with a look of unfiltered relief that made my heart swell. “I know it was hard to say all that.”

He gazed at me another few seconds before leaning in to kiss my lips.

“Not as hard as it could’ve been.”