Chapter Thirty-Five Julia
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“There’s nothing quite as painfully blinding—and beautiful—as a Midwestern sunrise.”
—Remington
Julia
The doorbell woke me up.
That and the ridiculously bright morning sun that was shining directly into my bedroom when I opened my eyes.
Wow.
I got up and went over to the window, but there wasn’t a car in the driveway.
Awesome, I thought, and hoped that Lauren would beat me to the door because I wasn’t in the mood for visitors.
I shuffled out of my room and down the stairs, feeling like I’d been sleeping for a hundred years. Must be the medicine. I was relieved the pills hadn’t killed me, and I did feel pretty well rested. Fourteen hours of sleep would do that, I supposed.
Whoever was at the door kept ringing the bell over and over again, which meant it was maybe Teanna, because who else would be that obnoxious?
“Will you relax on the doorbell, you idiot?” I said as I grabbed the doorknob, but when I pulled the door open, it wasn’t Teanna on the porch.
“Oh my God,” I said, because oh my God, it was Damion.
Damion Rutledge was standing on my porch.
In Springfield.
Damion. Rutledge. Was. In. Springfield.
“So you are alive,” he said, looking pissed.
What????
He was wearing jeans, a Mets hoodie, and wire-rimmed glasses, and his curly hair was all tousled, but his general appearance paled in comparison to the expression on his face.
Those dark eyebrows were down, his jaw was tense, and his hazel eyes were all over me like they were searching for something.
“What are you doing here, Damion?” I asked, sounding a little like I was seeing Santa Claus on the front porch.
How could Damion Rutledge be in Springfield, Nebraska?
“I had to make sure you weren’t dead,” he said grumpily, “because you wouldn’t respond to my texts or calls last night.”
“What?” I looked at the big angry boy on my porch and I was totally confused.
“You texted me, and then when I responded,” he said through gritted teeth, “you went radio silent.”
“I didn’t text you,” I said, even more confused.
I’d ignored his “can we talk” text from the day before because I’d had no idea how to respond, but we definitely hadn’t communicated last night.
I’d been groggy as hell, but I wouldn’t have—
“Yes, you did.” He angrily pulled the phone out of his pocket and held it in front of my face. “Look.”
I squinted, trying to read while my eyeballs were being assaulted by the sun.
Julia: Hey.
Julia: I hate everything right now.
Julia: Why aren’t you here with me??
Julia: HELP me.
“Oh my God, I meant to send those to Liam,” I said, half to myself, as I realized what had happened, as total mortification set in. “I sent those to you?”
His gaze swept over my face, eyebrows down, before he swallowed and said, “You did.”
“Oh geez,” I said, feeling like such a moron. “I’m sorry, I mean, I accidentally took a wrong pill last night and got too groggy to charge my phone so it was dead before I—”
“Everything’s okay?” he interrupted, looking less mad but still serious. “You’re fine?”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure how I felt. Because—
“Why are you in Springfield?” I asked. “How did you get here?”
“I flew,” he snapped, and then a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows, like he realized how weird the situation was. He blinked and watched me for too many long seconds.
“Because.” He cleared his throat and it was as if a switch had been flipped; he shrugged and his face turned casually arrogant.
Indolent and lazy, like he didn’t give a damn about anything.
He put his hands in his pockets and said, “Because there was no way I was going to let you bail on me for the season. I have a reputation to protect, remember, and you owe me.”
“So that’s why you’re here. For your… reputation?” Sensible, sure, but the look of… concern on his face said something completely different.
Something I was scared to even think about because of what it meant.
Is he here because he is worried about me?
Not possible.
Right?
“You came here because you thought—”
“Liam said you were in Nebraska, I assumed you were being a coward and running away, so I put my frequent flyer miles to work and grabbed a first-class seat to Omaha.” His rich-boy smirk was back when he added, “I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Ah,” I said, even though something about that didn’t seem exactly right. “Just a Rutledge using his money to close a deal?”
A chill slid over my skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake as I watched and waited for him to tell me I was wrong. To give me some other explanation as to why he was inexplicably on my porch.
In Nebraska.
On the other side of the country from where he lived.
How had he even known how to find my house? So many unanswered questions, but then his eyes—more green than brown today—dipped to my mouth for the briefest of seconds, and that chill turned to a crackle, dear God.
It’s still there.
Whatever had existed between us at the park was still there.
Damion swallowed. Cleared his throat. “Exactly,” he said, nodding. “That is exactly what this is.”
“Okay.” I also nodded, struggling to keep up with anything and everything because Damion was on my porch, what the hell.
“So.” His voice suddenly got louder and he pointed at the screen door. “This is the house…? This is where the Lowells lived before they became Upper West Siders?”
“This… is it,” I said, taken aback by the small talk.
“Who’s this?” I heard from behind me.
“Shit,” I muttered, because Lauren scared the crap out of me as she popped up over my shoulder.
“Wait—is this Beckett?” she said with a warm smile, squeezing around me in the doorway.
“Beckett?” Damion’s eyes darkened as his eyebrows shot up. He looked at me like an accusation. “You’ve talked about Beckett to your friends?”
I hadn’t—Liam had mentioned him a few times to Lauren—but the assumption seemed to annoy Damion and amuse Lo.
“I’m her cousin,” Lauren clarified. “Lauren.”
“Oh, well, I’m Damion,” he said, giving me a look that I couldn’t quite decipher. He looked irritated and almost like he was about launch into a lecture. Jaw clenched, nostrils flaring. “You talk about Beckett to your cousins?”
“I’m the only cousin she talks to on a regular basis, so that’d be cousin singular,” she said.
I nodded dumbly. “Singular.”
“For Christ’s sake,” he muttered under his breath, raising his hand and rubbing the back of his neck. “That’s not the issue here.”
“Then what is the issue here?” My tone matching his.
AND WHAT ARE YOU REALLY DOING HERE, DAMION??
It was all coming at me so fast.
Damion was here.
In Springfield.
How is this happening?
“So…,” Lauren began, trying to break the tension and the strange staring contest Damion and I seemed to be in the middle of.
“I have to head to campus in a few to work on a group project.” Lauren put her hand on his arm and gave it a pat, which for some reason made his face change.
He looked slightly less intense when she said, “Damion, can you keep an eye on Jules? Maybe have her give you a tour of our booming little town?”
“Oh, ah,” I said in a panic, because I wasn’t mentally prepared to spend time alone with him at the moment.
Not in Nebraska, not in New York.
Not anywhere.
“That sounds perfect,” he said, the cocky smile I was so familiar with returning to his face. Hazel eyes squinted behind those wire-rimmed glasses as he tossed me that grin.
“No but, I, um, I still have to take a shower,” I explained, running a hand over my hair and looking down at my wrinkled outfit as my brain scrambled to keep up. “I fell asleep in my clothes last night—”
“Loser,” Lauren teased.
“And I literally just woke up, so maybe—”
“I can wait,” he said, his gaze dipping down to my clothes, then coming back up again.
Stop it, everyone!
Everything was still moving too fast and I couldn’t get a grip. Only ten minutes ago I was in the deepest sleep of my life, trying to recover from seeing my ex being wildly flirtatious with his new and pretty girlfriend, and now this?
“I’m going to need at least, like, a half hour,” I said.
“Take your time,” Damion replied, looking like he wanted to laugh, that ass. “I can get to know your friend while we wait.”
“Cousin,” I corrected, feeling like this was a terrible idea but not really knowing why.
“Go shower,” Lauren said. “And we’ll play with the dogs.”
“Yeah, Nebraska, we’ll play with the dogs,” Damion said in a quiet voice, “while you go take a nice, loooong shower.”