Chapter 21
JULES
“Dad called. He’ll be in town next week…” Carol was talking, but the words were floating past me. I sat on a kitchen stool, elbow on the counter, fork frozen mid-air over a plate I barely touched. My brain? Fully checked out.
“Okay…” It was the best I could manage.
“Okay?” Her voice sharpened a little. I think she was doing dishes. Until she wasn’t. The water stopped. “Hey.” She waved her hand in front of my face, snapping me back into my body. I blinked twice, trying to reconnect what my eyes were seeing with what my brain could process.
“What?” I asked, sharper than I meant. Lack of sleep will do that to you. A solid night’s rest hadn’t been a part of my life for more than eight years, but the last few weeks were especially brutal. Not that I was about to let myself wonder why.
“I said Dad is coming.” She repeated.
“Oh, fuck. When?” I said, and she looked at me. That look that said: Bitch, really? I blinked back at her, genuinely lost.
“Next week.” She said slowly.
“Next week?” I dropped my fork onto the barely touched plate and grabbed my phone. Opened my calendar. Shit. Busy week at work. There was no chance I could pull off a last-minute ticket to Florida and fake a convention. “I can’t meet him. I’ve got a full week at work.”
Carol shook her head, disappointed. No surprises there.
I didn’t flinch. We had the same parents—technically—but not really.
She got the financially stable, mature version of Mom and Dad who loved to spoil their little baby.
I got the emotionally immature mom who parentified me starting at age six, and a father who was mostly a ghost with a job.
And at the end, I was the one who managed Mom’s appointments, therapies, meds… Yeah, not exactly the same childhood.
“Maybe you could stop being such a child and talk to your father…”
Oof. Rude. Fair. But still stung.
“No thanks,” I said calmly. “I didn’t get to be a child for most of my childhood, so excuse me if I’m going to be one now.
” Still holding my phone, pretending to scroll, I got up and circled the counter to drop my plate off at the sink.
Carol didn’t move, so I stood there, holding the plate, staring at her as she crossed her arms and pouted like a toddler. “What?”
“I would usually be way meaner about this, with no regrets at all, but you’ve been moping around about the fucking actor for almost a month now. So just… help me out here, would you?”
“This is you not being mean?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, softening her tone. “And I’m sorry. I know you were excited about him. But you don’t have to cut everyone out of your life, you know?”
“I’m hardly cutting out dad. We didn’t talk before Mom, we didn’t talk after, and we don’t talk now. Nothing’s changed.”
“I’m not just talking about Dad.” She replied.
I rolled my eyes. I did not have the energy for this conversation.
I dropped the plate onto the counter a little harder than I meant and walked away toward the stairs.
I hoped it would end there. Of course, it didn’t.
“You are cutting me out. Me. Why won’t you talk to me about him?
” I kept walking. Maybe if I made it to the bedroom, I could shut the door and pretend this didn’t exist.
“JULES!”
I stopped. Spun around. “WHAT?”
Carol sucked in a breath. Thank God, because I had nothing left in me for de-escalation.
“What happened?” she asked gently. I hesitated, but she wasn’t going to drop it.
She’d been circling this for weeks, asking questions I refused to answer.
And that was suspicious. I usually told her all the details, especially about men.
She was the first one I called when I first thought about divorcing George.
And by then she knew exactly why because…
I told her everything about… everything.
But not this.
I hadn’t told her because I couldn’t. Not without sounding insane. Not when Chris had floated into my life like a ghost and vanished as fast. No reason. No warning. No explanation.
“He just…” I swallowed, the words catching in my throat. I looked around, making sure the kids weren’t around. “He fucked me and disappeared.”
Carol froze, and her eyes went wide.
“No groundbreaking story,” I added, voice flat. “He won’t answer my texts anymore.” I held my posture because I wasn’t about to break in front of my little sister. “Okay?”
Please let that be the end of it.
She blinked, let it sink in, and then: “What a little bitch.”
I couldn’t help it. The laugh came out of nowhere, and my whole body let go all at once.
“Yes,” I said, exhaling. “Exactly!”
Carol fidgeted, her fingers tapping against her thigh, her foot shifting, like her brain was flipping through a million possible things to say and couldn’t settle on one.
“What if we split a bottle of wine and find you a new celebrity crush?” She finally offered. “You liked that Loki guy, right?”
“Tom Hiddleston. Yeah…” I smiled. It was a sweet offer.
But I was so tired. Not that I thought I’d actually be able to sleep, but maybe I could at least crawl into bed early and pretend.
“I’m sorry,” I said, stepping toward her and pressing a kiss to her cheek.
“I’m just… tired.” I turned and started toward the stairs.
As I reached the bottom step, her voice called out again.
“What about tequila and Dakota Johnson?”
My smile widened. Now we were talking.
Cocooned in my bed, I was finally enjoying deep and peaceful sleep.
My blankets felt warm and soft, wrapping around me, and it felt like the first truly restorative moment I had in weeks.
But, of course, the universe ruined it. A distant sound—a car engine—cut through the silence.
My first thought was that whoever this motherfucker was, I hoped they got a midnight knot cramp for waking me up.
The air outside was chilly. You could practically smell snow in the air.
I ignored it, squeezing my eyes back shut and willing myself back into that wonderful sleep.
Ignoring the constant noise in my head that came after the sun went down was no job for amateurs.
But the sounds grew louder. A car pulling into a driveway.
A door shutting. Footsteps crunching on the frosty ground.
Wait.
My eyes snapped open when it hit me like a bucket of cold water: the sound was coming from my driveway.
“Shit.” I jumped out of bed, the cold air biting at my skin and making me shiver as I ran down the stairs. My mind raced as I unlocked and opened the door, and there he was.
Chris.
His hand was frozen mid-air, about to knock.
The sight of him made me pause. It had been almost a month since we’d seen each other, and he was the last person I expected to find on my doorstep.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice still groggy. A small puff of breath escaped into the icy night air, curling between us. Part of me wanted to kick him and slam the door in his face. But my body? My traitorous, stupid body? It was practically screaming at me to hug him.
What the fuck, body?
How could I even think about touching him after what had happened?
After the way I spent the past month like a shell of myself, trying to unlearn what it had felt like to be near him.
I had to relearn how to function after getting a taste of what belonging felt like.
Like in my daydreams, but real. Left with the memory of the real him to mix with the dream version, like they teamed up to torture me on a whole new level.
And now he was here, standing on my porch like a ghost I’d summoned without meaning to.
He swayed, visibly drunk, his words tumbling out in a fast, barely coherent rush.
“You! You said you didn’t play games. But you do. And you are too good. I give up. You win. Satisfied?”
I stayed calm, but the cold made it impossible to ignore how awake I was now. My breath puffed out in quick bursts as I stared at Chris.
“Chris, it’s…” I glanced over my shoulder at the clock on the wall. “3:15. My kids are asleep.”
So much for my delicious sleep.
I scratched my eyes to clear the grogginess and to make sure I was actually seeing this. He mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear. I tugged at the hem of my oversized shirt, the one four sizes too big, but that barely reached my knees—damn, long legs—and crossed my arms for warmth.
“You should go,” I said, my tone firmer this time.
Chris nodded, his movements sluggish and his eyes unfocused as he looked at me. For a second, I saw it. The sadness. That one that sneaks up on you when you’re drunk and alone.
“You’re right. I should go…” His voice was soft, low, and so fucking sad that it twisted something inside me. But I was done. Done with the bullshit. If all I ever got was Dream Chris, that was fine. Dream Chris was way less of an asshole anyway, and more importantly, he let me sleep.
Chris turned, stumbling toward his car, and that’s when it hit me.
He was planning to drive back. Panic surged through me like an electric shock.
He was in no state to drive. Not in regular conditions, let alone at three a.m. in this weather.
He deserved a lot—a kick in the balls for waking me up, for one—but he didn’t deserve to die in the middle of the damn road.
Before I could think it through, I rushed after him, grabbed his arm, and stopped him in his tracks.
“Did you drive here?”
He gestured exaggeratedly toward the car as if it were the most evident thing in the world.
“Obviously!”
I felt my worry deepen, anger bubbling beneath it.
I was at a standoff with my own mind, torn between punching him all the way to his car or dragging him back to my house by the collar.
I’d never actually risk him getting hurt, though.
Just the thought of something happening to him felt like a sharp sting in the middle of my chest.
“I can’t let you drive like this.”