Chapter 33
thirty-three
JULIAN
I sat at the top of the grass hill and watched the waves turn over each other. After two weeks of Mila gone, I finally realized maybe everything did pass like the tides, even my time with Mila. It was clear she wanted to keep her life back in New York, and that life didn’t include me.
I didn’t turn to see whose footsteps approached me until I saw Sofia from the corner of my eye. I prepared myself for the smart remark I knew she had, but instead, she watched the high tides in silence with me, and it was nice. “Should I even bother with a lecture?”
I’d already given myself plenty. “Nope. Let’s talk about something else, like…how was the honeymoon?” Levi had splurged on a trip to Paris and used a friend’s connections for Sofia to talk with fashion designers she’d grown up admiring. The photos he’d sent of her in infamous drawing rooms spoke a thousand words.
“Amazing, but I didn’t come to talk about me. Are you okay?” It turned into a recurring question anytime someone was around me—Elijah, Taylor, people in town, my sister. I was far from okay. My heart was shattered into fragments, and I felt incapable of putting it back together.
“Who told you?” I didn’t tell her about Mila because I didn’t want to ruin her trip, but of course, she had her ways of finding out.
“News travels fast in this town, especially when it’s bad.” It explained the weird looks I got from people when I went into town for groceries.
“Well, I’m fine, Sof.” She saw right through my forced smile. “You’re really bad at lying, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about Cami.”
No one could possibly be as sorry as I was. The worst part was, I only had myself to blame. “Yeah, me too.”
She aimed a smile behind her at the house. “It looks great, by the way.” It was practically finished when Mila left, but to pass the time while she was gone, I stayed up all night making final touches, like planting a garden to line the pebble walkway and adding shutters to the windows. “I’m glad you think so, because I might sell it.”
Her jaw dropped. “What? Julian, you can’t.”
I shrugged. “Sof, all I’ve ever thought of since I was sixteen is Camilla. I even bought this house to feel closer to her, but now, I have to sit in it alone. I have to go figure out who I am without her.” I’d thought long and hard on whether to sell or burn the house to ash, but Mila’s words about not sitting and watching my life pass by stuck with me. I’d spent the last six years doing nothing but hoping she came back, and I never figured out what I really wanted out of my life.
“Can you just stop and think for a second? Your life savings went into the renovations, J. What will you do?”
I couldn’t look her in the eyes as I said the next words. “I’m thinking of going back to the Air Force. It’ll help pass the time while I figure things out.” It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re serving, so I figured, why not enlist for another term?“You’re going to leave again? I just got you back. There are other ways to get over Cami than disappearing again, Julian.” I knew that, but other ways took time. Besides, she had Levi to protect her, so she no longer needed me.
“Everything I touch turns to shit, Sofia. My relationship with Dad, your relationship with him, Mila. I need some time to clean up the mess.”
“What if Cami comes back one day?” Her tone held an underlying hint of hope, but I didn’t have any of that left.
“She’s not.” I finally entered the acceptance stage. Some people might have said I’d lost it, and maybe I had.