Chapter 43
Torin
Amachine has been beeping at the same steady rhythm since we arrived.
Wires lead from the machine to Lottie, who sits cross-legged in a hospital bed, a stack of magazines we brought her on a bedside table, along with a bunch of sunflowers and a bulging bag of Swedish Fish—her favorites.
“How’s Juniper?” she asks once she’s filled us in on everything her doctors have been telling her.
“Good,” I say. “Her sister is living with her now.”
At least, I think she is.
I swung by her apartment building to check on her and saw Juniper sitting on the front step, laughing with her sister.
Later, Archer saw them walking back to the building with takeout bags.
And Callum said they were out in the street talking with some other people from the building.
We take turns driving by, slowing our cars to a crawl, but we never stop.
Juniper needs to decide whether she sees a future with us. I want to believe we’ve done enough to convince her we will never hurt her again, but I’m not sure we have.
“She’ll forgive you,” Lottie says, blue eyes bright with optimism.
“Sure, she will.” Maybe she could forgive Callum and Archer, but it’s me she can’t forgive, and that’s why she walked away. As I get to my feet, I pretend I don’t see the look of concern she shoots Callum. “I’m heading back to the house. I’ll swing by again soon, Lottie.”
We say our goodbyes, and I hug her and leave.
Archer and Callum will sit with her for a bit longer. I’m ready to be alone to ruminate over every cruel word I flung at Juniper. And there were a lot of them.
But Lottie is doing better, and faster than any of us ever dared to hope. There’s a big reason for that.
Turns out that if you convince someone that they need a drug to keep breathing, they’re a much better hostage, especially when that same drug they think they need is the thing keeping them sick in the first place.
If Callum’s dad weren’t already dead, with the rest of our families locked up, probably for the rest of their lives, it wouldn’t have been Kylian putting a gun to his head and burying a bullet in his brain. It would have been me.
The machines monitor Lottie’s heart as the doctors remove all traces of the drugs she’s been taking for years. She’s probably well enough to leave, but the doctors want to make sure the drug didn’t do any lasting damage to her organs before she’s released.
The skies open as I slide behind the wheel of my car and slam the door shut. I sit with my hands wrapped around the wheel, staring up at the dark gray clouds. It’s depressing as fuck, and the shit weather is doing nothing to improve my mood.
Shaking off my moroseness, I start the engine, snap on my seatbelt, and turn left when I want to go right to pass by Juniper’s apartment building again.
She said she needed time to figure things out, and constantly driving past her apartment is not giving her that time.
If anything, it’s venturing into stalker-ish behavior.
Rain hammers my windshield as I pull my car to a stop outside our new house. I’m digging around in the glove compartment, trying to remember if I even have an umbrella, when my gaze snags on a figure shivering near the front door.
A familiar figure.
I’m out of my car, the engine running and the door wide open as I charge toward Juniper with no conscious memory of unbuckling my seatbelt.
“Juniper? What is it? Is something wrong?” I grasp the tops of her arms as I sweep my gaze over her, searching for a reason she’s here in sandals, a skirt, and a t-shirt, with no sign of a coat.
“S-should have c-checked the w-weather first, huh?” she asks, amusement warming her brown gaze as fat droplets of rain cling to long dark blonde lashes.
I let myself relax. Something can’t be wrong if she’s able to joke about this. Going out in torrential rain might be funny to her. It sure isn’t funny to me.
As I scoop her into my arms and unlock the front door using the keypad beside it, endless curses spill from my lips about how dangerous pneumonia can be. The curses continue as I track water up the stairs to my bedroom and through it to my bathroom.
I leave her sitting on the edge of the counter with a towel wrapped around her, turn to fill the bathtub with hot water when everything I’m doing—and not doing—hits me.
I squeeze my eyes shut and massage my suddenly pounding head.
What the fuck are you doing, Torin?
Juniper is finally here.
The thing you’ve wanted and were terrified would never happen is actually happening, and you haven’t stopped cursing her for going out in torrential rain long enough to find out if she’s actually okay.
I take a deep breath, release it, and turn around, bracing myself for an empty counter because Juniper slipped out of the bathroom while I was busy filling her bath so she wouldn’t die of pneumonia.
Yes, I know it’s unreasonable to think someone caught in the rain is going to die of pneumonia. But this is Juniper. I lost her before. I can’t lose her again.
With every muscle in my body tense, I turn around.
Juniper is sitting where I left her with a pale blue towel draped around her shoulders, shivering slightly, her eyes warm with amusement.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “You seem tense.”
“Am I…” I let out a bark of laughter. “I haven’t stopped cursing since I saw you.”
“Why did you?”
I try not to read too much into her amusement. She could be going into shock.
“Torin?”
I turn back to the sunken bath. “You’re freezing. I’ll run you a hot bath.”
She’s silent as I empty damn near half a box of Epsom salts in the bath and run the water, the only thing I have to make it enjoyable for her.
But I feel her gaze warming my back. I prefer a hot shower to start my day, and a cold shower when I can’t get Juniper out of my head.
Lately, all I seem to be having are cold showers, yet I still walk around with an erection more often than not.
“I prefer you when you curse,” she says in a voice so quiet I nearly miss it with the water filling the bathtub beside me.
Startled, I turn to look at her. “You do?”
She nods. “It’s better than when you’re tiptoeing around me, afraid of saying the wrong thing. The cursing feels more honest.”
My smile is devoid of humor. The thing pulling at my lips feels more like a grimace. “I’ve done the honest thing before. You didn’t like it, and neither did I. I’ll wait downstairs while you—”
“I hated you,” she cuts in, meeting my eye with a directness she didn’t before.
When she first walked into the library at Haven Academy, she nearly turned around and walked right back out again.
This is not the same Juniper Harrington.
She teased and quipped and smiled and joked, drawing a smile to my lips and capturing my full attention with barely any effort. And in return for bringing me all that joy, I filled her life with pain and cynicism. With hate. I will never forgive myself for doing this to her.
“I never hated anyone before,” she continues.
“My parents never encouraged strong emotions in River and me. Outside of heat, I think they would have preferred for us to live quiet lives devoid of anything too loud or too bright.” Her lips twitch.
“You can probably imagine their reaction when my dad found me nearly fucking one of his friends on his living room rug when I perfumed.”
My eyes widen, surprised by the sharp turn this conversation has taken.
Her gaze drifts over my right shoulder. “Is that for me?”
I assume she means the bath. Bewildered and off-center, I nod.
She hops off the counter and walks around me, turning off the water that was inches from overflowing. She kicks off her sandals and pulls her shirt over her head.
I turn my back.
I haven’t earned the right to call her June. Watching her undress also feels wrong.
Undeserved.
With my back toward her, and my eyes closed, it’s even worse than if I were watching her undress.
My imagination is filling in all the gaps between all that fabric rustling.
I hear the rasp of a zipper sliding down, and the soft sigh she makes when…
when she what? When she’s bending over and sliding her panties down her legs?
As she steps into the water? As she lets down her golden hair and runs a hand through it?
Why is the thought of her letting her hair down so fucking sexy?
Once again, I’m rocking an erection, and no amount of cold showers will do a thing to help me. One thought of Juniper and I’m gone.
“You can turn around,” she says.
I rub a hand over my mouth, muttering, “That’s not a good idea.”
“Why?”
There’s no way of answering that with all the sex-filled images running rampant through my mind, so I just turn around.
She’s sitting in the bath, hot steam curling like wispy smoke around her, her wavy blonde hair in a messy knot at the top of her head, and her arms wrapped around her raised legs.
Her skin is pale, and the faint dusting of freckles covering her bare shoulders is making me want to kiss each one.
I can almost see the curve of her right breast.
“I got very good at hating you,” she says.
My eyes snap to her face.
Her expression is so serious that I brace myself for the worst. “You’re not a hateful person.” She wasn’t before. She was sweet and innocent.
“I know,” she agrees, resting her chin on her knees. “I never realized how much of a good motivator hate could be.”
Crossing my arms, I lean against the counter. “And what did it motivate you to do?”
“Build a life for myself where I would never need you again.”
You had to fucking ask, didn’t you?
The same flicker of amusement from the front door returns. “Come here.”
I eye her warily. “Is that order a prelude to your drowning me in your bath?” I deserve it, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to embrace my fate so easily. I’m too much of a survivor for that.
A soft smile tugs at her pink lips. “I think that’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me for a while now.”
I walk over to her, sinking into a crouch in front of her. She’s so damn pretty, and I need to be close to her. Who cares if she drowns me in the bath?
With a tight grip on my shirt, she pulls me closer, and her kiss is so sweet it short-circuits my brain.
“Thank you for finding my sister and sending her to me.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “She means more to me than anyone in the world.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long to find her.”
“Yeah, well.” Sniffing, she draws me into a hug. “Your way worked out better than my way of screaming at my parents from outside their front gate.”
Chuckling, I wrap my arms tight around her and drop a kiss on her bare shoulder.
With a groan, I inhale the sweet fragrance of her skin, fighting with myself not to climb into the bath alongside her.
Far sooner than I want to, I release her and press my forehead to hers.
“You shouldn’t hug me when you’re all beautiful and naked in a bath, Juniper. I’m strong, but I’m not that strong.”
As I kneel beside the bath, she tilts up her face to me, the bright overhead lights casting her brown eyes a warm, deep golden brown. “Because you want me?”
My hands frame her beautiful face. “Because I've never wanted anyone as much as I want you. When you walked into the Haven Academy library is when my life started, and when you left me, my world turned gray. Because I love you, Juniper Edith Alicia Mabel Harrington, and no woman comes close to the way I feel about you.”
She’s smiling through tear-filled eyes, and I laugh when she bops my nose. “I warned you about throwing all five of my names around like that.” Her eyes turn soft. “It’s June. Call me June.”
I kiss her again because I can’t help it. With a racing heart, I ask her a question I’m as terrified of as I’m desperate to know the answer to. “Are you here to stay, June?”
“I can’t live my life motivated by hate, Torin,” she says softly.
“I need love and trust, and I want to be happy. Not ruled by hate. It is exhausting to be motivated by hate, and it does not make me happy. Before everything went wrong between us, you made me happier than anyone else had ever made me before.”
My heart starts racing as my mind snags on a word it skipped over before.
Hated.
Juniper said she hated me.
Past tense.
“Torin!” Callum yells from downstairs.
“You left your car door open and the engine running, you fool.” The sound of a door slamming follows Archer’s shout.
“June is here,” I call back, not daring to take my eyes off her. It’s the weirdest feeling, and it doesn’t make sense, but I’m terrified she’ll disappear if I look away from her for even a second.
Footsteps pound up the stairs, and both Callum and Archer are out of breath as they charge into my bathroom. Their eyes widen as they take in Juniper sitting in my bathtub.
“Why are you here, June?” I ask her.
I was too afraid to ask her before. All my cursing had a purpose. Distraction. It was a delaying tactic to put off an inevitable question.
Please let her be here for good.
Her eyes flick from me to Callum and Archer. Suddenly, she looks scared and nervous, but hopeful. “I love you, and I’m here to see if I can be happy with you. Forever.”