Brandon
My heart nearly explodes from my chest.
Julie is outside.
Julie. Is. Outside!
Wait, but she brought Oliver with her.
Look at his smug, annoying face.
For a guy who basically cheated death, he still looks better than me, and that pisses me off. There isn’t any time for that right now, though. I have to warn Heather about who is walking up the driveway at this very moment. I should’ve told her when I got back home, but she was in the shower so I left it alone. I planned on telling her before now, but here they are, slowly walking up the grass to ring the doorbell.
Heather is humming to herself in her purple room when I knock on the door and open it before she has time to invite me inside. “Well, hello boyfriend.” She puts a sweet tone in her voice and smothers me with it like honey. Her slippery, wet glossed lips dart toward mine and even though I’m totally grossed out by the sticky mess, I kiss her back anyway.
I fake a smile and grab her waist, pulling her away from me and getting a good grip on her so she can’t run. “I have something to tell you, girlfriend.” I look nervously behind me and see her glare at me in the process. “You probably aren’t going to like it, either.”
She pushes herself from me completely. “What is it?”
Okay, here we go.
I take a deep breath. “Oliver and Julie are here. She’s picking up some of her stuff from that room upstairs.” I blow out the rest of the air and watch her closely for a temper tantrum. She has about sixty seconds to throw one. She purses her lips together and squints at me, as if she’s waiting for me to continue. I shrug my shoulders and turn to leave, but she gently grabs my arm and tugs me back to her, making me land a few inches from her lips.
“Is there anything I can do to help you get through this?” Her eyelashes touch her cheeks and I can feel excitement in my bones. I have to push her away and clear my throat to compose myself just as I hear the doorbell ring. Heather laughs because she knows I’m playing the fool. She knew that she would get me heated and that’s why she did it, that little sneaky—
Bells ring around me.
“Okay, they’re really here now.” I breathe in deep for a few seconds longer than I should. Heather notices my nervousness and squints her golden-brown eyes at mine. I clear my throat to show her that I can shake it off, but we both know I’m not kidding either of us for a second. “Let’s get this over with. You and I have a date with that bed.” I playfully growl and point toward her ugly, purple-infested mess of a bed.
I know that once I’m able to be close to Julie and feel her warmth again, I’m going to be putty at her feet. She’s my angel; she’s saved me from everything without so much as me thanking her.
Heather gets to the door first and forces a perfect, welcoming smile on her lips. I snicker at her because I know how excruciating it is for her to play nice. For my sake, she will. I know she will. I just hope to hell she doesn’t ruin my sudden interest in her. Most times she’s dripping with so much desperation that it suffocates me; she’s like a siren, calling you to her addicting song.
Not Julie.
Julie is sweet and pure—everything you can ever imagine a perfect life could or would be. I can feel Oliver’s prestigious ego as the door opens and the four of us look at each other with such awkwardness that it actually hurts.
“Um…hello!” Heather’s voice is even more fake than her smile. She moves her body to the side of the doorway with me, extending her arm out for the two of them to walk into the house without touching us. I can feel the confusion coming from Oliver and Julie and she helps him hobble into the hall. Julie looks around nervously, like she remembers only the bad times she’s had here with me.
There were good times too.
A lot of good times.
Before I fucking ruined it.
I cringe when I think about how it must feel to come back here for her. “Uh, hey it’s nice to see you upright and walking again, man.” I chuckle and look at Oliver, who doesn’t even act like he heard me at all. I brush myself against Heather on purpose, so she can jolt me back into a normal person and help me through this. She takes my hand and squeezes gently; she understands how hard this is for me because she’s feeling the same exact way.
Oliver and Julie are together.
Heather and I are…
Together.
Julie pokes Oliver’s side and he groans. “I bet it is nice to see that I can’t be erased.” His eyes find mine and my blood starts to boil. Julie pokes his side again, giving him a look I know too well.
“I mean…thanks,” he hisses. He takes a deep, calming breath. He doesn’t want to be here any more than I fucking want him here.
Why didn’t she just come alone?
She doesn’t trust me.
I don’t blame her. I don’t trust myself with her, either.
My smile grows wicked and I let go of Heather’s hand. “Are you going to be able to take those stairs and help Julie with her stuff?” I almost laugh, but Heather pinches my finger to make me calm down. I know that he would at least try to get up the stairs because he doesn’t want me alone with Julie.
Heather picks up on my frustration. In her own twisted little way, she silently decides to help me get what I want. “I can get you something to drink or eat if you want while you wait, Ollie.”
Oliver cringes. “Why can’t you call me by my real fucking name?”
Julie holds up her hands. “Okay, calm down. Oliver, please…let Heather help you down here, okay? I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Oliver snorts. “Uh, no. I’ll be okay. I’m coming up.”
“No, please don’t make me put my foot down.” Her smile matches his and it makes me fucking sick to look at. I glance at Heather—from in between their little love bubble—and she frowns, looking at the floor. I instantly glide toward her and take her hand. We listen to the both of them while our eyes lock in matching pain.
“Oh, put your foot down, huh? I’m so scared.”
Julie playfully slaps Oliver’s shoulder. “You should be. I don’t want anything more happening to you—I can’t handle any more bad things right now.”
He sighs. “Fine, only because I love you.”
She giggles and Heather whimpers. “I love you too. Now, go sit down.”
Oliver glares at me and does what she asks.
I am going to faint. That used to be me…I used to be the one who would do anything she asked of me. You just do that for someone like Julie, no questions asked.
“Actually, Heather…” Julie’s voice breaks back into my head. “He really hasn’t eaten anything decent in a few days. Would it be too much trouble—”
“No trouble!” Heather squeaks and lets go of my hand. I admit, it pisses me off that she’s so quick to jump to Oliver’s aid, but I understand so I let it go. Heather flitters over to the sofa and hands Oliver my remote.
My remote.
I almost explode when she looks at me. I clear my throat and open my arms to Julie, watching Heather’s annoyed gaze. Okay, so now we are playing the jealousy game as well as the get-your-ex-back game.
This is going against all the rules of getting what you want.
I gesture an invite to Julie to walk up the stairs and I lock eyes with Oliver. I can feel his hate for me from twenty feet away. All I can do is smile at him without the girls seeing me and I follow Julie as closely as I can up the flight of stairs knowing that he’s seething about it. When we enter the room with all the boxes, I shut the door behind us and she doesn’t notice or act like she fears me anymore at all.
I never wanted her to fear me in the first place.
She starts rummaging through some boxes and places an empty one on a nearby table. She fills it with small knickknacks and other various objects. I wait for her to go through a few boxes before trying to fill the silence. “So…” I sit down next to where she stands. “He looks like shit.” The look of horror on her face sends shivers down my body.
“He nearly died, Brandon.” Her scoff sends me into a frenzy. “You’d look like shit too.”
She opens another box and buries her thoughts into it. I have something that I need to tell her, but I don’t know how she’ll react, so I leave her to her walk down memory lane for a while, just watching her. The curves of her hips define more as she bends over, and I blush from wanting her so fucking bad.
I wish it would stop.
She’s going to find my secret in these boxes.
There isn’t much I can to do waste any more time, so I join her in opening boxes and sifting through them, holding up several things for her to approve or disapprove. We share photos with each other and talk about the past—the good past—and how many good times we shared.
“Oh, remember this? This is from that summer we stayed in that log cabin on the beach in Florida.” She shows me a glossy photo and we laugh at the funny faces we’re making in it. “Oh, and you got so sunburnt that we had to stay an extra few days for you to heal.” She holds her hands over her mouth, laughing hysterically.
“Yeah, you weren’t the one with a thousand fires on your ass.” I smile and take the picture from her. Our fingers touch and she doesn’t notice, making my good mood vanish quickly. “We had a lot of good times, Jules.”
It’s now or never.
I have to try before using my secret weapon.
“We can have an entire lifetime of good times if you come back.”
Julie cocks her head, her gaze searching mine for an answer. “Wait, you wanted to get me up here without Oliver to do this?” Her voice shakes violently, vibrating the air around our bodies. “What is wrong with you? You have Heather downstairs, what about her?”
“Okay, okay,” I growl at her. “Keep it down before Saint Jackson breaks his other leg trying to run up the stairs and save you from nothing.” I stand up to walk across the room and sit back down far, far away from her to save a little face. “It’s no secret I’m still in love with you, Julie. Heather can even see it, and that’s why she offered to stay with Oliver downstairs—so I can do whatever it takes to get you back.” Her face crumples when she thinks about Oliver alone with Heather downstairs, and her gaze goes to the closed door. “Don’t worry, she won’t touch him. I have her wrapped around my finger…remember what that’s like?”
Julie makes a gagging sound, shaking her head. “You’re as disgusting as the day I left. I’m going to just take these few boxes and go. I don’t know what I was thinking coming up here alone with you. Everything you and I had was a lie.” I see a white piece of paper sticking out of a box when she passes me. I quickly snatch it before she leaves the room and I wave it in the air as she turns to face me with disgust on her face.
Complete disgust.
“You and Heather deserve each other.” She tries to handle the two boxes in her arms with grace. “You are both messed up, and you mess other people up in your self-pity process.” Her eyes follow the document that I’m still waving in the air. “What is that? Why are you waving that around like a flag?” She puts her boxes down and grabs the paper from me. I watch the color drain from her face as she reads through it. “This isn’t real…I would have remembered something this big.” She continues to read, and her knees buckle enough for her to hold onto the now open doorframe. “When did this happen? Is this real?”
Panic.
There’s panic in her voice.
This isn’t going well.
And it doesn’t make me feel good, either.
I know I can run downstairs with the paper and show it to Heather and Oliver, but Heather wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. Oliver would be furious. I smile and see Julie’s eyes scanning the paper with so much hope that it isn’t real that it’s upsetting.
She sees my smirk. “Oliver knows all of the things you forced me to do when we were together; he isn’t going to like this.” Her nose crinkles like she smells something sour and the darkness in her voice scares me a little. “If you think this means anything, you’re wrong. I don’t believe this is even real. It’s a scare tactic to get me to stay.”
I didn’t even think of that.
I act offended, even though she’s right. “Oh, please. You remember this and you know it. It’s sad that I have to even show you this for you to remember.”
“Why are you just now showing me this if it’s real?”
I shrug. “I kept it hidden until I needed it.”
“I didn’t do this!” Her hiss fills the room and shakes my body. She snorts and pockets the paper for safekeeping. “You can do what you want, but Oliver will never believe you over me. He loves me more than he hates you.” She starts to bite her fingernails—she does this when she knows she’s backed against a wall.
“Well, let’s find out.” I start to glide past her, but she stops me.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I hear the voice that I created for her: that certain mixture of fear and hopeless pain that she perfected years ago. “Haven’t I had enough from you? What will it take for you to just stop torturing me? All I ever did was love you, and you threw me out like garbage…and I try to move on and be happy with someone who has healed every single burn you’ve given me, and for what? When will you just let me go so I can be happy? Why can’t you just be happy with Heather?”
I want to wipe the tears away that are running down her cheeks.
But it’s not my place anymore.
I can see that clearly now.
It took another round of me breaking her down to realize that.
“I won’t tell him about it, Jules.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “You can trust me, I won’t tell him. You’re right, I need to try and be happy with Heather. I’ve been obsessing over what we had for far too long…I’m only fooling myself.”
She searches my eyes for the lie.
There’s no lie.
She’s right and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I’ve lost her forever.
Nothing I do is going to make her love me more than Oliver now, after he’s swooped in and saved her from her horrible life.
The life I created for her and then destroyed.
She shakes her head at me and then picks up the boxes again, but I take them from her arms. She lets me help her, but it’s not without reluctance. “Hey, Julie?” She puts her fingers to her lips to let me know to lower my voice. “How do you know you didn’t love me and that you do love him?”
“I did love you—don’t think that I never did. There was a time when all I loved was you, but you ruined it. We could have been happy forever if you didn’t destroy everything. And here we are…strangers again.”
Ouch.
My chest hurts.
She feels bad, but I don’t bother calling her out on it. “There are lots of different ways that I know I’m in love with Oliver and not you anymore. Life with Oliver has its drama, of course, but nothing like our drama. I can see a healthy future with him, and I feel good about it, but with you I felt…trapped. I lived in a dark place for a long time. I’m not saying we didn’t have good days, but you crushed me into a million pieces like it was a sport.”
I let her come down on me because I deserve it. I’m pretty fucking much a piece of scum on her shoe.
“Just promise me you won’t treat Heather like that. You two actually—in a messed-up sort of way—need each other.”
She turns to lead me back down the stairs but looks at me once more, as if this is the last time she’s ever going to see me.
“Don’t get in the way of your own happiness. Set some rules for yourself and follow them. You’re a good guy—you just need to find the right person that can handle you, and it wasn’t me. Do everything the complete opposite and you should be okay.” She gives me a small smile, but I know it doesn’t belong to me anymore.
She belongs to Oliver.
She takes the boxes from me and I don’t continue following her downstairs. I hear Oliver ask her a question and after a few long minutes, the front door opens and closes…I can feel her grace leave the house.
She’s gone for good now.
Footsteps bleed into my ears and Heather peeks her head around the corner of the open doorway. She looks around the room and frowns. “She didn’t take much.”
I shake my head and try to hold back the tears. “Throw it all away.”
She comes over and hugs me. My arms tighten around her thin waist. “I’m sorry you didn’t get what you wanted,” she whispers into my ear. “I didn’t either, but I didn’t even try.” I smile and let her kiss my cheek. “But I’m still here, you know that, right? She’s gone, but I’m still here.”
My smile grows bigger. “Yes, you are.”
Julie is so fucking right…like always.
Heather and I are going to be happy. Time to start making some rules for myself and actually following them.
“I think it’s time you move into my bedroom and we act like we’re in a real relationship.” I feel her conviction but her arms ease when she pulls away and looks up into my eyes. “Unless you want to stay in that purple monstrosity of a room.”
She giggles. “I hate the color purple.”
I laugh loudly and pull her back into my body. “I hate the color purple too. But…” I breathe in her citrus perfume and hold her close. “But I think I might like you a little.”
And this time…
I’m not lying.