CHAPTER 25
Julian
My body was warm, comforting in that way you only get in your own bed. The sheets were cool where they twisted around my legs, and nearby I could hear the rhythm of small swells gently crashing against the hull of the yacht.
I stayed suspended between sleep and waking. Then I turned over in bed.
And there she was… Kylie. Seeing her hit me with the same force it always had.
That angelic face. Dark brown hair spilled across the pillow beneath her, tangled from sleep.
The early-morning light peeking through the open doors painted her skin gold.
Her mouth curved slightly at the right corner, as though happiness still found her even deep in a slumber.
I smiled. She had a way of making that happen.
Her eyelashes fluttered softly before her eyes opened, meeting mine instantly. For a second, she just looked at me, peaceful and impossibly beautiful, before a sleepy smile spread across her face.
“You look so happy,” she murmured.
A small laugh escaped me. “Of course I’m happy. I’m with you.”
“No,” she said.
I frowned slightly. “No?”
Her fingers brushed along my jawline. “You’re not with me, silly.”
Confusion moved through me, disconcerting against the warmth wrapped around us. “What are you talking about?”
Her smile deepened. “You’re with her,” Kylie whispered.
It was an odd thing to say given the circumstances. What was she saying? “Kylie…,” I said. “You’re—”
Then she put her fingers on my lips before pushing the blankets back and sliding gracefully out of bed. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “Let’s go watch the sunrise.”
I followed her out through the open doors of the bedroom and onto the deck of the yacht I named after her. The ocean stretched around us, the world still basking in that blue-gray hush that comes before dawn. Then the sunrise began.
The Bahamas has the best sunrises. It’s why I chose to come here every year with her.
Kylie stepped beside the railing barefoot, one hand resting against the wood while the breeze blew strands of hair around her face. I looked at her and felt it all over again. That overwhelming love that rearranges your entire life around another person without you even realizing it’s happening.
I moved closer behind her instinctively, my chest brushing softly against her back. “I love you,” I said quietly against her hair and into her right ear.
She smiled toward the horizon. “I know.”
She turned slowly to face me then, sunlight beginning to catch warm amber inside her eyes.
“I love you more than anything,” I whispered. Emotion climbed unexpectedly into my throat.
Kylie lifted her hand and touched my cheek. “I know, Julian.”
I reached for her, wanting to pull her into me, needing to touch her… but she stepped back with a playful smile. “Wait.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise? I don’t need any surprises. I have you.”
“No, Julian. You’ll want this one. I promise.” Her smile turned mischievous now, younger somehow. “Cover your eyes.”
“Kylie…”
“Julian.”
I smiled helplessly and finally lifted both hands over my eyes. “Happy?”
“Are you actually covering them?”
“Yes.”
“No peeking.”
“I’m not peeking, babe. I promise.”
Then her voice lowered theatrically. “Abracadabra…”
I smiled.
“… and voila.”
She tapped my shoulder. “Open them,” she insisted.
I lowered my hands slowly.
At first, I didn’t understand what I was supposed to be seeing. Just the shoreline in the distance, white sand glowing beneath the rising sun, palm trees swaying in the breeze.
Then Kylie stepped beside me and pointed toward the beach. “There,” she whispered.
And I saw what she was pointing at… Harper, standing barefoot at the edge of the water on the beach.
The tide caressed her ankles. She wore a loose white dress, and she was beaming.
She looked stunning standing there. Harper lifted her face toward the sunrise and smiled, completely unaware we were watching her.
My body began trembling. I looked back at Kylie as she watched me carefully.
She looked both hopeful and hopeless, an understanding that she possessed that I yet did not.
“I brought her here,” she whispered.
“Kylie… What… Why are you doing this?”
Her fingers slid softly through mine.
“For you, Julian. She’s here for you.”
I felt a tear form in my eye. I blinked to fight it off and as my eyes opened up, both Kylie and Harper were gone and I was alone.
I wake abruptly, disoriented and very on edge. For several long seconds, nothing makes sense.
My heart pounds unevenly and with increasing speed while fragments of the dream cling stubbornly.
I can still feel the warmth of the Bahamas against my skin, Kylie’s laughter drifting across the yacht deck, Harper standing barefoot on the shoreline bathed in morning light.
I can still see all of it with terrifying clarity.
What really sends chills down my spine is how it unfolded… Kylie smiling at me as she said, I brought Harper here… for you.
I suck in a breath and stare upward into darkness, trying to orient myself while panic and peace collide violently within me. It’s the strangest sensation, being both comforted and unsettled at once, as though my mind and body cannot agree on whether the dream was a gift or a punishment.
Slowly, the room around me comes into focus. My bedroom in Manhattan. Harper asleep in the bed beside me, her mouth parted slightly. The bedside clock says it’s nearing five a.m.
Reality slowly takes over piece by piece. I sit up slowly, pressing a hand against my face as I try to steady myself, but even now I can still hear Kylie’s voice so clearly it seems impossible she isn’t here.
You’re not with me. You’re with her.
Jesus Christ. It felt and seemed so real. Was it?
I carefully swing my legs over the edge of the bed so as not to wake Harper, and sit with my elbows braced against my knees, staring blankly at the floor. My pulse slows, but the dream refuses to loosen its grip.
There had been an eerie peace in Kylie’s demeanor. And somehow that unsettles me more than the grief ever has.
I stand, then cross the room barefoot before pushing open the glass doors leading onto the small terrace connected to my bedroom. It’s unusually warm for January—at most in the lower fifties—and I need this fresh air.
The city is alive this morning. Steam curls upward from rooftops and subway grates while distant sirens echo downtown somewhere before dissolving into silence again.
I grip the iron railing and close my eyes.
For years, I have lived inside grief so carefully it became comforting in some odd way. It was a routine I built my life around because it felt safer than imagining a life beyond it. Kylie wasn’t simply my wife. She was the great love of my life. The center of everything good I had ever known.
And losing her—losing them—gutted me so completely that eventually I stopped trying to fill the space at all.
Surviving them was already a betrayal in some ways, it seemed.
But now Harper has entered my life, almost accidentally, and in doing so she has begun waking parts of me I thought were buried, never to be revisited.
At times, Harper stirs up those dormant emotions: hope, peace, desire… others too, other emotions that I can’t quite accept.
What was Kylie doing in my dream bringing Harper?
“What am I supposed to do with that?” I whisper to myself as I stand on the terrace.
The city offers no answer.
Only silence and lights and the morning air moving across my skin while Manhattan stirs beneath me.
And standing there alone on the terrace, I realize a truth with clarity that leaves me breathless.
The guilt isn’t coming from wanting Harper but rather from the horrifying realization that for the first time in years…
I may actually be allowing myself to imagine a future again.
With someone else. The thought should be comforting, but instead I’m flooded with dread, guilt and pain.
Then, suddenly, two arms slide around my waist from behind. The contact startles me so badly that my entire body jerks. My pulse spikes and I spin around.
Harper’s staring up at me, confusion flashing across her face at my reaction.
“Holy shit, you scared me, Harper,” I say, my hand pressing briefly against my chest.
Her brows crinkle in confusion. “I’m sorry.”
I stand there looking at her, trying to reconcile everything at once—the dream, the terrace, the lingering dread in my chest, the fact that Harper is standing here in front of me while part of my mind is still back on the deck of the yacht watching Kylie smile at me.
“What are you doing out here?” I ask before I can stop myself.
The question catches her off guard. “I woke up and you weren’t in bed, so I came looking for you.”
Harper steps closer again, cautiously this time. “Are you okay?” she asks.
The concern in her voice is as real as I’ve heard in anyone.
Once she lets someone matter to her, like Dylan, she’s all in, and I can see her doing exactly that with me.
She wants more than the curated version of Julian Langley the rest of the world gets.
She wants understanding and vulnerability.
She wants the parts of me I’ve spent years keeping locked away.
And standing here beneath the strangely warm January sky, all I can think about is Kylie.
Harper lifts her hand slowly toward my face, a gentle show of emotion and comfort. “Julian,” she says softly, “you’re kind of scaring me.”
I close my eyes. I can’t do this right now.
I’m in no state to be here dissecting dreams and grief and what Kylie may or may not have been trying to tell me while Harper looks at me with those perceptive eyes that always see too much.
I want escape. So instead of answering her, I grab her.
She gasps softly as I turn us abruptly, pressing her back against the terrace wall hard enough to steal the breath from her lungs. One of my hands slides immediately into her hair while the other braces beside her head, trapping her between my body and the cold stone.
“Julian—”
Then I kiss her. It’s hot, and violent, and primal.
I don’t want contemplation or reflection or anything involving deep thought right now. I want oblivion.
My mouth moves harder against hers and she makes a small, startled sound into the kiss as my hand slides possessively down her body, gripping her thigh and pulling her tightly against me. The contact sends a brutal surge of relief through me because this—this part of things—is simple.
The body part makes sense to me. It’s the emotion that could destroy me.
I kiss down her throat roughly, her pulse racing fervently beneath my mouth while her fingers grip tighter against my shoulders.
Every piece of emotional chaos still claws at me, but I stifle it, shielded by the sexual surge I unleash on Harper.
I give into the powerful urge to lose myself inside Harper deep enough that I don’t have to think about anything, or anyone, else at all.