Chapter Eight Juliette #2
With a huff, Juliette flops down onto the sand next to her.
Nowhere near close enough to touch, but angled so she can see Kacic’s face.
It’s too dark to make out many of her features.
Just the silhouette of her face, the curve of her cheek, the little button of her nose, her tongue as she licks her lips.
“Drink it,” Juliette demands, setting her glass into the sand. “Slowly!” She grabs Kacic’s wrist without thinking as she makes to drink it like a shot of vodka.
An electric jolt rushes through her, lightning-bright, and heat scorches across her skin. She drops Kacic’s hand as she flinches away.
Kacic freezes, like a deer caught in headlights. Her breath comes in uneven pants, as if she can’t expand her lungs fully for fear of breaking.
Juliette flexes her hand, hating how dizzy she is.
For a moment, the roller coaster twists of her stomach that had started with Kacic’s arrival had halted.
It’s the first time she’s ever touched Kacic outside of a tennis court.
“It’s meant to be sipped,” Juliette says, her voice too strangled for her liking.
She picks up her glass, letting it cool her warm palm.
Kacic doesn’t look at her as she slowly lifts the glass to her mouth and sips. Her throat bobs and Juliette licks her sun-chapped lips, a strange heat gathering in her stomach like a storm.
The moment breaks when Kacic recoils back from the glass and screws her eyes shut, tongue darting out as she almost spits the liquor back out. “Lemon?” she accuses.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Too good for citrus?” Juliette snaps, defensive.
Kacic grimaces and sets the glass into the sand. “I hate lemon.” She unscrews her water bottle and chugs half of it, then shudders and smacks her lips like a drama queen.
“Whatever. More for me,” Juliette says, finishing her drink in two long, slow drags.
She grabs Kacic’s glass and takes a sip.
It only occurs to her then that her mouth is lying where Kacic’s had been a moment ago, but she shoves the thought away.
Kacic may have ruined her night but she will not ruin a perfect glass of limoncello.
“How many of those have you had?” Kacic asks, a judgmental note to her voice that makes Juliette seethe.
“A couple,” she says defiantly, grateful her voice doesn’t slur.
She should be pleasantly tipsy. She should be going out into Naples and finding a young, hot thing to bring back to her room and make love to in the salty air.
Instead, she’s on the beach with her biggest rival and soulmate.
The soulmate she never chose and doesn’t want.
Juliette grits her teeth, her face blotchy with angry heat.
“Why did you come tonight?” Juliette snaps, turning to face Kacic fully.
This is her fault. She ruined Juliette’s last night of freedom, and she deserves to know why.
There is another kind of heat boiling low in her stomach. This is the longest she’s ever been near Kacic, and something inside of her coils tight at the thought.
Kacic shrugs. “I have nowhere else to go,” she says. If she was aiming for nonchalance, she misses by a mile.
“Lonely, Kacic?” Juliette sneers. “None of your friends want to deal with you?”
Kacic glowers. “Something like that,” she mutters.
Juliette’s breath hisses in and out of her open mouth. Maybe Livia is right. Maybe she is being unreasonable and bitchy, but Kacic makes her blood boil.
Kacic pulls her sleeves over her wrists, fingers curling tightly into the hem. “Why are you here?”
“I’m playing in the Connolly Cup, dumbass,” Juliette says, realizing after it comes out of her mouth that Kacic hadn’t meant Italy, but rather the beach.
Kacic shoots her a loathing glare. Juliette doesn’t back down and stares right back, forcing Kacic to specify. “I meant,” she grits out, “why are you here on the beach with me? I thought you couldn’t stand me.”
“Maybe I’m here to bask in your self-pity?” Juliette snipes.
Kacic twists her head away. “Then go away,” she mutters, almost too low for Juliette to hear.
Juliette should leave. She brought Kacic a drink. They exchanged more than ten words. She can scurry away without the guilt of being a bad host. But her limbs are drunk-heavy, and the sand is warm, making it impossible for her to lift out of its soft cocoon.
“I won’t apologize for winning,” Kacic says suddenly.
Juliette stares at her. “I wouldn’t believe you if you tried.”
Kacic meets her gaze evenly, her eyes burning with such intensity that Juliette can’t find her breath. “What is wrong with you?”
Juliette blinks rapidly, trying to regain her composure, but her brain is sluggish. “What?” she asks stupidly.
Kacic’s breath heaves. “I don’t know what I did to make you hate me so much.”
“You’re not the one who lost a Grand Slam final!
” Juliette snarls. “You get everything, and for what? You win a few good matches and suddenly everyone says that you’re going to be the greatest of all time.
The second coming of Aurore Cadieux and Payton Calimeris!
” Juliette’s hands shake, and she wants to hide them in the sand.
“You think I want this attention?”
“Oh, spare me the pity party.” The wind snaps against Juliette’s face, crisp compared to the fire that burns on her skin. “I’m sick of it, Kacic. And I’m sick of everyone saying you’re the perfect professional and I’m the asshole.”
“You started this!” Kacic hisses.
“I did not! You said it was such a shame that I only won because Chen sprained her ankle. Don’t pretend that wasn’t bitchy.”
Kacic blinks. “I was being honest. I wanted to see you guys play a good match. Didn’t you want to win fair and square?”
Juliette doesn’t deign to respond, glaring at her.
Kacic’s lower lip wobbles, a sheen on the edge of it that Juliette can’t help but stare at. “Whatever. Why don’t you just continue existing as if I don’t?”
Juliette shakes her head. “Unbelievable.” She watches as understanding flickers over Kacic’s face. Her mouth falls open, and she exhales like Juliette punched the air out of her.
“You’re jealous.” Kacic says it like a revelation, as if she can’t believe it.
Now it’s Juliette’s turn to be sucker punched in the stomach. She can’t scoff or deny or even say anything at all. So, she does the next best thing.
She runs away.