Chapter Thirteen Damion
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“New York coffee shops mirror the city itself in the way they’re both welcoming and exclusionary at once. Their existence calls out to the passerby on the street, tempting him with everything he thinks he’s looking for, but once inside, he wonders if he’s come to the wrong place entirely.”
—Remington
Damion
When Julia suggested meeting at Irving Farm Coffee for our next tutoring session, I was so damn disappointed, I almost refused.
Because I was dying to get back into those walls.
Julia: Running late but almost there.
Of course she was running late.
I set my phone on the table and sat back in my chair, sighing because what the hell was I even doing? I’d agreed to help her because I missed the house, yet here I was, waiting for Julia Nebraska in a coffee shop.
Coffee shop = not a house.
I was homesick for another visit to that place, but there wasn’t a good way to explain away my clawing need to hang out at Riverside Manor.
I love your kitchen so much it brings tears to my eyes.
I want to take a nap on the thick rug in your game room.
God help me, I need to smell your parents’ closet and see if I can still pick up hints of cigar smoke.
No, not weird at all.
But for real, it felt like Remi was disappearing more every day, and I was desperate to feel him, any little piece.
Just as I thought that, I saw Julia through the window, scurrying toward the entrance like she was running late for work—head down, curls flying.
God, even the way she moves screams that she isn’t one of us.
She stood out like a sore thumb at school, with her wild hair and whatever was going on with her ridiculous Louis Vuitton shoes. Even though her uniform matched everyone else’s, her accessories made her stand way the hell out.
Of course, at the moment she appeared to be wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, and Chuck Taylors, dressed to traverse either a cornfield or a baseball diamond, so she was outdoing herself on the whole I-don’t-belong-here front.
Which gave me joy because she didn’t.
She didn’t belong here, and I needed her gone. She had a key to Remi’s house and I didn’t anymore, and that was messed up.
The bell over the door rang as she entered, and I leaned back in my chair and cued up my best charming smile, so ready to mess with her.
Because I had realized something lately.
Keeping her off-balance was therapeutic for me.
Something I could control in my uncontrollable life.
Between my father’s expectations and the gaping hole left behind by Remi’s absence, I constantly felt pulled under, like everything was floating past me, coming at me, and all I could do was helplessly hang on.
And I hated being helpless.
Enter Julia.
Daughter of my enemy, inheriting my inheritance, residing in my residence.
The brown-eyed recipient of my future.
Her constant side glances, wrinkled forehead, and quick blinks when I messed with her told me she was in over her head.
Which was nice, because that was right where I wanted her.
Confused and at my mercy.
I gestured toward the seat across from me, where a baguette was waiting for her. “Hey, Jules.”
Her eyebrows slammed together as she sat down. “It’s Julia.”
Oh, sunshine.
“So sorry, Julia,” I corrected. “But I bet your friends back home call you Jules, don’t they?”
“Some do,” she admitted, eyeballing the bread like it was poisoned while at the same time failing to disguise the fact that she wanted to eat that bread more than anything in the world, which kind of made me want to laugh. “But we aren’t friends.”
“And don’t you think we should be?” I replied, tilting my head and wondering if everyone dressed like that back in Nebraska or if it was just her.
She looked at me for a long minute, her mouth a little open like she was in shock and not sure what was going on. “You want to be friends.”
It wasn’t a question. Her gaze was all suspicion.
“Friends, or… something,” I said, dragging my eyes down her body.
Dammit, I thought, abruptly returning my gaze to her face.
The goal was to make her uncomfortable, to irritate her, but that’d felt way too Corbin-coded for my comfort, leering at her like a fucking creep.
I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded my chin toward the bread instead. “You know I got that for you—you can eat it.”
“Stop buying me bread,” she said with an irritated laugh. “I like bread, but it’s not going to work.”
“What’s not going to work?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Whatever this is. Why is this the second bread you’ve given me? What’s with the bread, like, what are you doing?”
“So suspicious, Nebraska,” I said, giving my head a shake. “I saw the stash at your house and assumed you’re a junkie, and since I’d really like you to focus all that Midwestern energy on me for the next hour, I thought an investment in delicious carbohydrates might provide the assist.”
“Why would I focus on you?” she asked, her eyebrows all crinkled together.
Right in the trap, sweet girl.
“Because I’m your tutor and want you to concentrate on math…?” I said, narrowing my eyes like I didn’t understand her. “Whoa. Unless you’re suggesting something else, something less educational and more—”
“No,” she said, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “Oh my God, no!”