Elliot woke the next morning relatively late. He and Julia had stayed up late, making love long into the night, but he’d gotten a full night of restful sleep. By nine-thirty, he’d eaten breakfast, explored the beach, and gone swimming, all while Julia slept. Not just dozing, but knocked-out, dead-to-the-world, sleeping.

Still, he couldn’t take it anymore. He walked into the bedroom and stood to the side of the bed where Julia laid dead center, tangled in a mess of sheets, her hair absolutely wild around, her face smashed into a pillow. He put a knee next to her hip and splayed a hand over her stomach. She really was too thin. He thought she was a stunning woman, but he was smart enough to know that she didn’t eat enough to keep herself healthy. She worked long, hard hours and needed a better diet to keep a pace like she did. He would press her eventually about her control issues in the kitchen. He knew that and she had to know it, too. But for today, he’d just enjoy the feel of her, warm under his palm.

“Come on, Shorty. Time to wake up,” he said gently as he shook her. She didn’t even stir. “Julia,” he said firmly. Nothing. Not even a change in her breathing.

It wasn’t until almost noon that she finally stirred.

Elliot had been reading a newspaper he’d found on their doorstep when she began to come around. He said nothing, just watched as she took her time surfacing, fidgeting in the bed and trying to get comfortable. Eventually, she sat on the edge of the bed, her wild chestnut hair surrounding her.

“Good morning,” he said.

Julia grunted in response and without a word shuffled into the bathroom. Elliot followed her with his eyes, watching as she shimmied her panties down, propped her elbows on her knees, put her head in her hands, and peed.

He knew then that he must have been half in love with her because he was charmed. No pretenses, no lies, just real. His lips turned up as she finished and he went back to his paper, giving her some privacy.

When she returned, he noted that she’d left the panties in the bathroom and she had a bathing suit in hand. She slipped the bottoms on easily enough but struggled with the top. It had a lot of strings that were already tangled and getting worse by the minute. He’d decided to stay out of it, until she got frustrated and tried to climb back into bed.

Elliot jumped out of his chair and grabbed her around the waist, snagging the top in his fingers and tossing it aside. She didn’t need it anyway.

“Oh, no you don’t! I’ve been waiting all morning for you to get up.”

He hauled her to the kitchen and sat her on the kitchen counter. Standing before her, he framed her face with his hands, moving her hair out of the way and gently kissing her on the lips. She was soft and warm with sleep, pliable in his hands.

“Good morning,” he repeated.

Her green eyes were open but hazy with sleep. “Morning,” she rasped, her voice husky.

“You hungry?” he asked as he pulled a loaded fruit bowl closer to them.

Julia nodded so he pulled a few grapes loose, lifting them to her lips one by one and gently putting them in her mouth. He let his thumb graze her bottom teeth and hardened when she licked him for good measure. She smiled slowly at him, that dimple appearing in her cheek.

He’d be damned, but he thought it might be the first time he’d ever really seen her smile, at all.

He left her to eat a few bites of whatever she wanted while he grabbed her a bottle of water from the refrigerator and when she’d eaten and had a drink, he pulled her outside to the beach.

He snagged a few towels before they headed down to the clear blue water. Julia dropped to her knees, settling on her stomach while he sat next to her, looking out over the water. He admired not only the view, but the amount of privacy they had ensconced on their own island. He privately mused for a moment, thinking about the things that money could easily buy and the difference between how he lived and how Julia lived.

When he looked down a moment later, Julia had her head resting on her arms, her eyes closed, hair pulled up in a giant mess of a knot.

“Sleeping?” he asked.

“No. Do you want to lube me up?” She opened one green eye, crystal clear in the bright sunlight.

He looked at her, stunned. “Did you just make a dirty joke?”

“Me?” She tried to look appalled but failed miserably despite her straight face. “I have no idea what you mean.”

He grabbed a bottle of sunblock and threw a leg over her, straddling her extraordinary round ass, settling his hardening cock against her cheeks. Her bottoms were a bright orange color and there was a heart cut out of the material on the waistband. He put his fingers under the fabric and realized the cut-out would leave a tanned heart when she took the bottoms off. Cute, he thought with a laugh to himself. He squirted some of the lotion on his hands and rubbed it for long moments into the skin of her back and shoulders. He worked it into her sides before moving to her ass cheeks and then her legs. When he finished that, he helped her turn over and sat her up, pressing his lips against hers in a lazy, languid kiss before starting to rub lotion on her shoulders and up and down her arms. As he did, he took in more of the detail work of her tattoos. He felt like each time he looked at them, he discovered something new. His favorite parts were the colorful pieces, especially the Peter Pan scenes. He rubbed the lotion on, inspecting the lines and detail work, the color patterns and textures.

He stilled when his thumb brushed over a hard ridge under her skin. It was hidden under the ink at the base of her wrist, hard and raised. Startled, he grabbed her other hand and searched that wrist for the same mark, a cold slither of horror sliding over his spine, the hair on the back of his neck standing up when he found it.

When he looked up, her sea-green eyes watched him, waiting. Her face was carefully blank and the Julia he’d been coaxing out of her shell was nowhere in sight. Not knowing what to say, he set her wrists down and asked her to lay down. For the first time since he’d known Julia, he wasn’t so distracted by the feel of her breasts under his hands and the sight of her nakedness that he couldn’t think as he rubbed lotion on her chest. All he was doing was thinking. What the hell had happened to her? And why had she done that?

* * *

Julia let him stare at her as he rubbed her breasts with lotion. He was there with her physically, but she’d lost him mentally. He’d felt her scars and had withdrawn immediately. Was he disappointed? Did he think she was mentally unstable? Would he want to be with her anymore? 

Part of the luxury of being covered in ink was that the past was easy to hide.

“There was a time when I thought it was too hard,” she told him.

Elliot’s hands stopped moving on her chest and he leaned down to kiss her, bathing her in an overwhelming sense of relief. He spread out on his stomach next to her and propped himself up on his elbows.

“My birth parents were drug addicts that beat the crap out of me and left me for dead,” he said out of the blue. Julia turned her head, listening intently. “They told me they wished I’d never been born. When they went to jail, I went to a home for boys after being tossed around the foster system for a while. I hated it there, but by some miracle, one of the social workers talked one of her friends into taking me in. Lori Williams brought me home a few weeks later.” He rolled over and stacked his hands under his head and looked up at the sky, his eyes translucent when the sun hit them. “It took me a long time to adjust to having a family that didn’t hate me. Every time Cole or Tucker broke something, because really, they were just little kids, I would stand in front of them like a human shield, waiting to get the shit kicked out of me. Not once did my parents lay a finger on me in anger. Instead, Lori just hugged me and told me what a good brother I was.” He tilted his head to look at her then and her eyes were riveted on him. “You were right before, when you asked me if I joined the police academy to honor my dad. It was the only way I knew how to show him that he was the man I thought of as my father. That he was the one I wanted to be like, not that piece of shit that kicked me while I laid on the ground crying.”

“I’m sure he already knew,” Julia commented. “Your dad.”

“He did,” Elliot agreed. “But it still brought us closer.”

Julia looked up at the sky and took in what he’d said.

“My grandparents hated me,” she told him quietly. “At first, after my mother left me there, it was mostly disdain. They didn’t want me and they let me know it. Then, it turned into something else.” Julia rolled onto her side and faced him.

“What do you mean your mother left you there?”

“My mother gave birth to me during a rebellious phase. When she realized how hard it was to raise a baby, she went back home to her parents but they couldn’t stand the idea of her not living up to their expectations. So she signed me over to them so she could get married.”

Elliot sat up, his black eyebrows drawn down farther than she’d ever seen them. “She what?”

“It was easier for her to find a suitable husband without a toddler in tow,” she explained, just as her grandparents had always explained it to her.

“She gave you up to find a husband?” he growled.

“I wasn’t a very good child for them. I didn’t say the things they wanted me to say at the right time. I didn’t know how to act around other people, and that made my grandmother so mad. I’ve always been prone to anxiety attacks and they accused me of embarrassing them on purpose, of being willful. I was still young when they sent me to live in the pool house with my tutor.”

“You lived in the pool house?”

She shrugged. “Mrs. Langell was okay. She was a good teacher and I liked being a student. I graduated from high school when I was thirteen.”

“Holy crap.”

“I was homeschooled because they said I embarrassed them in public.” She sat up and looked out at the water.

“Was that when they drugged your food?” he asked.

She stiffened at the memory but continued. “They did that on and off, depending what they had going on. If they were having an important party and wanted me out of the way, it was a sedative. If they thought I was too high strung, it was antidepressants. If she…” Julia sucked in a breath. “If she thought I looked fat, it would be some kind of diet pill.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Where the hell was your mother?”

“With husband number two, I think.” She shrugged. “I only met husband number three and four. She didn’t need me.” She looked at him with a hopeless expression. “I went to college, but I was young and it was a lot to take in.”

Julia took a deep breath and stalled. She just didn’t have the words to say to him. How do you tell someone that you want so desperately to love you, that you’re unlovable? She just shook her head and fought back tears as she looked away.

“Just get it out, Shorty. You’ll feel better,” he told her as he put his arm around her shoulder in support. “I’ve got you now and I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”

“Can I just get back to you when I’m all Zen about my past like you are?” she groused.

He smiled softly and kissed the side of her head. “If that’s what you want.”

* * *

He could read the frustration on her face, a tangible thing that he could see and touch if he reached out. He hated pushing her, but knew she’d feel better if she just got it out. He also knew that if she didn’t want to tell him, she damn well wouldn’t.

“My grandparents hate me. My mother forgot about me. I was hurt and confused. I tried to kill myself. It didn’t work. The end.”

He took that in, wondering about the details she’d skimmed over.

Julia looked away again. “Can we just drop this, please?”

“I just want to know you, Jules.”

“I know. I like that about you.”

“You just don’t want to do it,” he supplied as he pulled her back to lean against his chest.

They watched the water for a while as the sun rose high in the sky above them. Julia leaned her head against his chest and sighed.

“I just didn’t want to live anymore. I gave up.” He squeezed her a little tighter, shaken by her words, and kissed the back of her head. “It was easy. I had nothing to lose.”

“This world would be a very dull place without you in it, baby. I’d still be stumbling around in the dark without you to light my way.”

“Me?” she asked, surprised.

“Yeah. You,” he confirmed. “If you haven’t noticed it just yet, you’re kind of important to me, Julia. You just seem to get me like no one else does and I like the way you make me feel. Like I’m Superman and you’ve been waiting, just waiting for me to come along to save the day.”

When she said nothing after a few minutes, Elliot pushed the subject off and brought up something else. Giving her time to think about the bombs he’d dropped on her.

“Where are your grandparents now?”

“My grandfather was the CEO of Louzier Enterprises, though I heard he retired a few years ago. I’m sure my grandmother is still tormenting everyone that crosses her path.” After a second she added. “My father mentioned that my grandfather’s been sick.”

“Does your father run in the same social circle?”

Julia scowled. “God, no. My grandparents hate my father.”

“Why?”

“Because he got their daughter pregnant, ruined her life, and then left her.” She then asked quietly, “Can we not talk about this anymore?”