6. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
JULIAN
A loud thud rouses me from my peaceful sleep.
An unintelligible sound grumbles out of me as I roll over and swipe a hand over my face.
I blink my vision into focus and stare up at the ceiling.
I wonder briefly if I imagined the sound, but then I hear it again.
However, this time there’s a soft feminine voice that follows and it’s. . .singing.
What the fuck?
I slowly lift myself into a sitting position, scratching my cheek as I listen. I slide out of bed and creep toward my bedroom door. Pressing my ear against it, I listen closely.
The muffled words are spaced out as if they’re only singing every other word, but I can’t make them out.
I open the door gently and make my way down the hall, following the voice that can’t seem to find a tune.
It grows louder as I approach the living room.
When I turn the corner, I see the trespasser.
I blink rapidly in shock, my heart kicking.
I’m too stunned to move or avert my eyes from the scene before me.
There’s a woman in a small cropped white T-shirt and pink polka-dot panties watering my plants.
Her hips sway before she slides on fuzzy socks over to the next plant that needs tending.
I spot the headphones covering her ears, the song she’s listening to blasting in her eardrums. She’s completely preoccupied and too consumed in her own world to notice my presence.
It makes me feel like I’m a foreign person standing in the living room I paid for.
Long auburn red hair swishes back and forth as she sings, her long legs moving gracefully with her body as she nurtures my plants. She even plucks out the dead leaves.
Nothing about her screams intruder . Her actions are too routine, which confuses the hell out of me. I look around to make sure that I’m in my apartment. When I’m positive, I relax a little.
I try to think of how to approach this situation and come up with absolutely nothing. I could back away, go to my room, and pretend I’m not here.
No, that’s too weird.
I could leave the apartment completely and then. . .
The woman begins to turn around and I freeze as I realize I’m too late and there’s nowhere to run. Ah, Christ.
Our eyes lock and her singing seizes abruptly. Her surprise quickly morphs into a mixture of horror and embarrassment. The watering can drops from her grasp and then she screams.
Really fucking loudly.
I wince at the high-pitched sound, my shoulders rising to my ears.
I cover my eyes as I retreat backward. “I didn’t see anything!
” I try to yell over her scream. My mind is racing with my heart, and a million and one thoughts are pounding through me.
My back hits the wall and I wince in pain.
Damn, she has a good pair of lungs on her.
“Who are you?” she demands sharply, and I feel something soft hit my leg. A decorative pillow? My decorative pillow. “Get out of my apartment! ”
“Your apartment?” I ask and scoff. I keep my eyes covered as I point at my chest. “This is my apartment.”
There’s a beat of silence. “What was that?”
“You’re the one that broke into my apartment,” I explain, confusion clouding my head. “The question is who are you ?”
“None of your business, pervert,” she snaps.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Exasperated, I ask, “How am I a pervert?”
“You were staring at me.”
“Not on purpose!” I yell and then take a composed breath. “Look, if you could put some pants on, we can sort this out like two grown adults—”
“I’ll put on pants when you put on a shirt.”
Absolutely ridiculous. I would laugh if I wasn’t so disoriented.
It’s way too early for this. “Have we slept together? Is that it?” I ask.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been stalked by a one-night stand.
I’d like to know the level of crazy I’m dealing with here.
She’s not familiar, but it wouldn’t be the first drunken tumble I’ve gotten myself into.
“Pig!” she scolds. “No, we didn’t sleep together. Ugh!”
Her reaction takes me aback, and I can’t help but uncover my eyes and blink at her. “Why’d you say it like that?”
“What?” She’s standing much closer to me, wrapped in one of my throw blankets, glaring daggers at me.
My heart does a weird skip in my chest as her gaze pierces me.
She’s pretty; beautiful, actually—painfully so.
It’s the type of beauty that puts a strange ache in your chest. I’ve never laid eyes on this woman in my life. If I had, I’d know it.
“The way you said it.” I shrug, my mouth tugging downward. “It’s kind of offensive.”
She scoffs. “I’m living a nightmare right now and you’re offended ?
” Her tongue digs into her cheek as she shakes her head.
“You want to know what’s offensive?” I don’t know that I do, but I see that she plans to tell me, anyway.
“Your…” She scans me head to toe, searching.
Her cheeks flush a faint shade of pink at whatever she finds.
Flicking her eyes back up to mine, she goes with, “Face.”
My brows lift in amusement. “My face?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
She’s got a good mean mug on her; I’ll give her that.
Her soft green eyes are expressive with an upturned almond shape and her slender nose has an elegant curve to it even as it flares with her anger.
Her lips are full and pink, matching the tint on her high cheekbones.
Freckles dance across her smooth skin and I have to force myself to focus.
It’s clear she’s flustered, so I change the subject back to the issue at hand. “Are you ready to tell me why you’re in my apartment?”
She eyes me skeptically, still looking two seconds away from scratching out my corneas. “How do I know this is your apartment?”
I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Because it just is.”
“For all I know, you could be a squatter.”
Ha! “Like yourself?”
“I’m not—” She huffs a breath in annoyance. “You know what, I’m calling Carter.”
His name rolling off her tongue has me mentally pausing. She walks over to her phone sitting on the arm of the couch, careful not to turn her back to me. I clear my throat. “That wouldn’t happen to be Westwood, would it?”
She pauses, her brows furrowing. She blinks a couple of times before her eyes widen. “You’re James Bond?” Her question is barely a whisper.
I frown, tilting my head as I watch her internally panic. “No, I’m Julian Havord.”
She winces and laughs awkwardly as she tightens the blanket around her shoulders. “So, funny thing. . .”
SHE SITS ACROSS FROM me in the living room, now wrapped in a silky, burgundy-colored robe. It’s not any less revealing than what she was wearing before and has me gritting my teeth every time my eyes fall to her smooth thighs.
I put on a plain white T-shirt with my sweatpants, and it still makes me feel like I’m laying myself bare.
I like the protection my suits grant me.
Wearing a suit completed me—shielded me somehow.
I only managed to catch a glimpse of myself when I brushed my teeth.
My hair is unkempt, and I couldn’t hide the dark circles under my eyes even if I slept for the entire day. Lately, they’ve become more permanent.
I’ve learned two things; her name is Andrea Sommers, and she’s Carter’s cousin. I knew he had a relative who lived in the city, but when he called them “Andy” in a brief conversation, I thought he was referring to a guy.
Andy is not a guy.
There’s something about her that makes me want to loosen the hem of my shirt around my neck, but I refrain from doing so.
When I called Carter, he quickly explained that she was evicted from her apartment building since the landlord sold it to a new contractor for demolition. She and every other resident in the building were only given a twenty-four-hour notice. Typical asshole landlord .
“I can hear your brain rotating like a rotisserie chicken,” she states.
“I’m trying to think of what to do with you,” I tell her honestly and I almost reach up to run a hand through my hair but stop myself. Now that I’m closer, her eye color is more enhanced. They remind me of a place I used to love when I was a kid.
Her lips purse. “Can I ask why you have so many creepy paintings in your apartment?” It’s the last thing I expect to come out of her mouth and my lips twitch, threatening to rise. “Are you a collector?”
“In a way, I suppose,” I answer, giving a half-truth as I wonder if I could gain some raw feedback here. It’s obvious Carter hasn’t told her anything about me. Not sure if I should be offended or not, it’s still an opening for a new perspective that I’m happy to take advantage of.
She rolls her eyes half-heartedly. “Could you be any more vague?”
“You’re rather forward to someone you’ve only just met.” I rub my chin with my thumb and index finger, contemplating my next words. “Is there something you would change about them?”
Her eyebrows shoot upward. “The creepy paintings?”
I dip my chin and then study her closely as her eyes roam the walls, taking in each painting. Her already pouty mouth pulls down into a frown. I notice that her attention on the canvas closest to the window lingers the longest. Something about it causes the slightest tilt of her head.
It's of hands ripping open a screaming face. Inside of the face is a shadow of a child staring at a tall reflection of themselves.
Most of my work is done in various shades of gray and black. There’s an eeriness most people feel when viewing my work. I enjoy inciting something inside of someone. I didn’t care to pinpoint any particular emotion as long it made them feel something .
It’s clear she doesn’t know how to interpret them, but creepy isn’t anything new.
When she finally focuses back on me, I hate that I can predict her answer before she says it. “Color.”