Chapter Forty Julia
CHAPTER FORTY
“Grand gestures are cheesy as hell. Never fucking skip them, son.”
—Remington
Julia
I went into my room, shut the door, then let out a silent scream as I leaned against it because OH MY GODDDDDD!
The adrenaline was still pounding through me, and I was pretty sure I’d never really be able to sleep again.
Because, yeah—running from the cops. That was pulse-jarring. Sure.
But the kiss??
“Holy shit,” I whispered into the empty of my room. I could die. “Holy shit!”
Damion’s Uber had pulled up in front of my house the second we got home, so I was disappointed we hadn’t really had a chance to say goodbye. Or kiss again. Or talk about whatever this meant, oh God.
I leaned down to turn on the lamp when I heard the tap.
I froze, then heard it again.
The quietest tap.
On my window.
My heart was in my throat as I crept closer in the darkness I knew by heart, my pulse pounding.
Because Will used to climb the trellis and tap on my window.
All the time on warm nights.
I swallowed and felt unsteady as I approached the window and looked out, searching for ghosts of summers past.
But I saw Damion instead.
Damion was dangling from the trellis.
I yanked up the window, leaned out the opening, and asked, “What are you doing?”
He shrugged and gave me a rebellious smile, his confident hands resting on the white lattice. It should’ve looked wrong for the city boy to be dangling off the side of my house, but he looked somehow just right.
Like he’d been born to climb my walls in expensive glasses and a backward ball cap.
“I didn’t like getting interrupted,” he said with a shrug.
“You didn’t like getting interrupted?” I coughed out a laugh in disbelief, ignoring the way my hands were shaking just the tiniest bit. “So you climbed my house?”
Will might’ve done it before, but Damion doing it felt like a much bigger deal.
“I just…,” he said, his smirk falling away, sliding into something more… honest. He glanced below, toward the ground, and when his gaze returned to mine, something about the way he looked at me made me feel weightless. “I wasn’t ready yet, Jules. Were you?”
Even though I was inside and he was outside, our faces were close.
A breath apart, only the space of a sigh between us as I leaned out the window and he leaned closer.
And I wasn’t exactly sure what he was asking.
All I knew was that I hadn’t been ready either.
He reached out a hand, taking my chin between his fingers like he had at our Italian dinner. His warm thumb traced over my skin, back and forth, as his eyes were all I could see.
Can I trust you? I wondered.
Could I really trust this rich boy from New York?
Could I really fall again?
The pad of his thumb moved slowly, sliding back and forth over my skin as hazel eyes watched me, and, God help me, I wanted to fall.
I felt hypnotized, electrified, as he slowly leaned closer.
Said my name in the softest whisper.
“Jules…”
“Hey, Julia, can I borrow your shampoo—” Lauren asked, barging into my room, her eyes going wide as she saw Damion’s head in the window. “What the—”
I gasped—I think Damion did too—at the sound of Lauren’s voice, which made Damion falter on the trellis.
“Shit!” he said as he grappled on the half-dead climbing branches and lost his footing.
“Oh shit!” I repeated, watching in horror as he lost his grip and fell. “Oh my God!”
Being the Mr. Perfect that he was, though, Damion somehow did the whole six-foot-drop thing, yet managed to land on his feet.
“Are you okay?” I shouted, too loudly.
“Did I interrupt something?” Lauren asked, but I ignored her.
Damion smirked and gave me a thumbs-up, but not before I heard the ominous—and oh, so familiar—creak of the Whittles’ front door.
Nooooooooooo.
The last thing I needed was Edna, the next-door neighbor, calling my mom about a handsome young intruder who happened to climb up her daughter’s window while she was back in town. Mrs. Whittle had ratted on Will and me one too many times.
Her eavesdropping was legendary.
And always resulted in a grounding.
“You better go.” I straightened up from where I’d been leaning out the window, suddenly feeling awkward and unsure how to act. “The neighbors will be gossiping.”
“Or I could come inside, and we could…”
“Could what?” Lauren asked, pushing her face out the window.
Could what? We could what, Damion??
“Uh. Yeah,” he said, swallowing. “Never mind. I’ll get going.”
He started to walk away, toward the Uber waiting for him at the curb.
But then he stopped.
We could what??
He looked almost… timid, his eyes down like he was nervous.
Or… something.
God, does he regret it?
“I’ll see you back in New York, right?” Damion said, looking up at me.
Looking curious. Looking… worried.
Oh, that face.
But his words—New York—reminded me of things I’d temporarily forgotten.
New York, where reality was waiting for us.
I nodded. “I’ll see you back in New York,” I replied, my heart doing cartwheels at I watched him walk to the Uber and get inside, unable to figure out what the New York version of me and Damion would look like now.
“Jules.” Lauren’s stern voice pulled me from my wondering. I turned around to see her standing in my bedroom, holding an empty bottle of shampoo in her hand.
“Are you sure this is a good idea? I don’t want you to go through another destructive heartbreak like you did with Will.”
She didn’t even have to ask how I felt about Damion. She could see it written on my face. Hear it in my voice. She knew me that well.
“He’s not Will, though,” I said, feeling the need to defend him because he wasn’t Will.
He was everything I didn’t understand, everything I wasn’t sure how to handle, but he definitely wasn’t Will.
And maybe I liked that about him.
She shifted on her feet, hand on her hip. She wanted more.
“Plus, I don’t know… he makes me feel alive,” I said.
“Alive?” she repeated.
“And brave,” I added, realizing it was true. “He makes me feel brave.”
Something about that made her stern motherly look of concern melt. “Well, being alive is good. Being brave is better.”
“Feels great, too.” I agreed, then coughed a ridiculously lovesick giggle as I thought of the kiss and added, “Unbelievably great.”
“I can see it’s too late for warnings. You’re too far gone.”
“Am I?” I said, because even though I’d been with Will for so long, this feeling for Damion was something entirely new to me.
Does he feel the same way, though?
I couldn’t help but notice the way his shoulders slumped and his voice got heavy when he asked if he’d see me in New York. What did it mean?
But I shook the thought out of my mind.
“You are so far gone you are no longer on the map. And besides,” she added with a sly smirk all her own, “a rebel might be good for you.”
I let Lauren’s words sit for a while.
“I think…,” I began, smiling as I remembered Damion’s voice in the back of the truck. “I think I want to be rebellious for a change.”