Chapter Nineteen
It’s my fault for thinking this was more than it was.
My vision is blurred as I push through the crowd and I vaguely hear my name being called, but the blood rushing through my ears makes it hard to tell if that’s it. The crowd has only gotten bigger since we arrived, so it takes longer than expected to make it to the edge, into a clearing on the beach, and I suck in a lungful of fresh saltwater air. Everything around me is muffled as I think about how cozy Brent looked with that woman, the same one who has been giving him looks all night, and my stomach rolls with anxiety.
A hand comes down on my shoulder and I flinch away from it, then spin around with my eyes narrowed. Brent stands in front of me, his gaze darting over my features with concern, and the tears fall freely down my cheek. “Julia, it wasn’t what it looked like.”
I scoff and throw my head back, then look back at him. “Oh, so she wasn’t pressing her tits into you and you weren’t smiling at her like you enjoyed it? Sorry, my eyesight must be worse than I thought.”
Brent shakes his head and frowns. “It wasn’t like that, Julia.”
“Then what was it like?” I ask loudly, the music drowning my words out as the bass gets louder. My mistake with the picture was not listening to his side, so this time, I know that’s what I should do.
“She came onto me. I asked her politely to back up, but she wouldn’t listen to me, and that’s when you saw the two of us.” He shakes his head and reaches out to me, a hand falling against my cheek. “I wouldn’t hurt you like that, Julia.”
“I don’t want to be made a fool of again, Brent. I don’t know if I”ll recover.” What am I saying? I do know I won’t recover, not when it comes to him.
“Are you okay?”
“How do you keep being so nice to me?” I ask. “I’ve done nothing but accuse you of the worst in situations, yet you’re still standing here.”
An emotion I can’t decipher flutters through his eyes, and he opens his mouth, ready to say something, but a slow song spills through the beach that has him giving me a small smile. “Think we can finish out the concert?” I nod and let him lead me back through the crowd, but this time, he stops further back than before, and he wraps me in his warm arms.
A flash goes off, but I don’t think anything of it at first because I assume it’s a strobe light from the stage. Another goes off less than a minute later, and this time, I turn to look over my shoulder, gaze colliding with a tiny man wearing black and a large camera covering his eyes. “Hey!” I say as I start marching over to him with a frown. He smirks when I get closer, Brent hot on my heels, and I glare at the spectator. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Just getting my paycheck, Babe. Nothing personal.”
“Delete it,” I grind out.
“What makes you think I’d do that?”
“It’s an invasion of privacy!” I screech, the sound carrying over the crowd surrounding us, and I receive glares from most of them in response.
The photographer nods slowly, then looks over at Brent with a smirk. “Okay, but only if you pay me double what my boss would give me for it.”
When I look at Brent, I have a pleading look on my face, and his lips are pulled down into a frown. He sighs, digs into his back pocket, and throws a wad of cash at the photographer. “There, now see to it that the image never goes further than that cheap ass camera.”
By the time our little spat is over, I notice that the band is starting to go off stage, and everyone around us is heading back the way they came. It’s over already? Brent is silent beside me as we head back to the car and I study him, waiting for his emotions to be revealed, but I come up empty. “I had fun tonight. I’m sorry again about the girl, I hope everything is good with us.”
He nods curtly and keeps his gaze straight ahead. “Everything’s great.”
I’m not convinced, but I don’t say anything. Not even as we pull in front of the resort entrance or when the valet walks up to us and takes Brent’s keys. He follows me onto the elevator and presses both of our buttons, still as quiet as a mouse, and my lungs feel as though they could burst at any moment from how suffocating the silence is.
“Well,” I say, giving him a small wave as I step off the elevator. “Thank you again for tonight, it was fun.”
When I get into the suite, Mallory is already sitting on the edge of the couch while bouncing her foot impatiently against the floor. She snaps her gaze to mine and lifts up. “There you are,” Mallory mutters as she struts over to me. She sits next to me on the curb and leans on me with a frown. “What’s going on?”
“I love him,” I state. She lifts up and stares at me, waiting for more, which I give to her. “You don’t have to tell me I’m stupid. I already know that.” Her mouth parts, but she doesn’t say anything because I don’t let her. The last thing I need right now is her opinion, even if it might be necessary. “He doesn’t know, and I’m not sure I should tell him.”
“Wait,” she says, her hand falling onto my bicep. “Why wouldn’t you want to tell him? Did something happen?”
“Yes, and now,” I mumble while looking straight ahead. “I saw him with some girl, blew up over it – which is something I’ve been doing a lot of when it comes to him – and after that was all said and done, a photographer was taking pictures of us.”
The moment I saw the camera pointed at us, all I could think about were the plethora of comments that would come after the image got posted, and that’s the last thing I wanted. “Brent gave him money to keep it quiet, but it got weird after that. Maybe he sees me differently now that I freaked out. I don’t know.”
“Are you sure that he sees you differently?” I blink at her in surprise, trying to determine what she’s getting at, and she sighs. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I think you should’ve at least given him a chance to talk it out. Maybe he’s upset that you’ll start being in the spotlight more if you guys get together, so he just wants to make sure it’s something you want or don’t want.”
“I’m out of my element here, Mal. Every time I think things are going well, something tries to get in the way and prove further how different we are from each other.” I look back and shake my head. “Maybe it’s for the best, but we probably wouldn’t have worked out, right?”
It hurts to voice that so much that I physically want to lean over and puke all over the marble tile. I hold the sick feeling inside, though, breathing deeply to keep it at bay.
“That’s not it, Jules,” she says. I stare at her for a few seconds in silence and she sighs... “He likes you, too, you know?”
“No, Mal, I don’t know,” I whisper. “He’s had plenty of opportunities to tell me he does, so why hasn’t he?”
Instead of trying to figure everything out, I slip into my bed and look at Mallory curiously when she slides beneath the blankets beside me. She shrugs, giving me a small smile, and says, “What? A girl can’t comfort her best friend?”
“How are you so sure?”
She cocks her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“You said he likes me. How are you so sure about that?”
“Uh uh,” she says, shaking her head and throwing her hands up in surrender. “You can go ask him yourself.”
“Unlikely,” I mumble and throw myself back into the plush mattress, focusing all my attention on staring up at the ceiling. My phone pings, and I peek at the text, scrunching my eyebrows together when I see Brent’s name on the screen.
It’s nothing but an apology and him letting me know that he wants me to come by his room so we can talk, and my heart stutters wildly in my chest. What could he want? He could be telling me about his feelings if he even has them, and that sends me flying up on the bed breathlessly.
I lock my phone without responding and drop it into the middle of the bed. Then, I blow out a rough breath that has Mallory placing a soft hand over my thigh. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She’s known me for years. I’m sure she can notice when I’m not, but I don’t want to keep crying over someone who doesn’t deserve it.
“Seriously, Jules, why don’t you go to his suite and tell him how you feel, see if he feels the same way?”
“And be rejected immediately? I’d rather not,” I mutter.
“What if he doesn’t do that, though?” She seems hopeful that maybe he will confess his undying love for me, and it makes my heart ache that she’s got so much faith in him.
I should go talk to him, especially since I didn’t let him do so when our picture was posted. It would’ve been nice to learn from my mistakes. “Fine. I’ll talk to him.” My stomach is rolling, and everything I’ve drunk or eaten is threatening to come back up, but this is for the best.
“Great,” Mallory says with a bright smile. When I give her a stern frown, she shrugs her shoulders like it’s no big deal. “What? I was getting used to my bestie becoming a sister-in-law.”
“Woah, that’s a bit much, don’t you think?”
She rolls her eyes and sits up to look straight at me. “It’s not much when you see love in your brother’s eyes for the first time.” That throws me off, and I lock my eyes on her. “He does, Jules.”
If he does, how come he’s making everything so damn difficult?
It doesn’t matter.
I shake the thought away and take a deep breath, then grab my phone to send a quick text to Brent about whether he’s back at the suite or not. It doesn’t take him long to respond, letting me know that he is on his way back, and I briefly wonder if he’s been waiting for me to text him.
It only takes a few minutes to send my response, asking him to let me know when he gets to his room so I can stop by and talk to him. When he texts back, he doesn’t give me a single hint, only a simple okay, and I still can’t help but wonder what that could mean.
Does it mean his feelings aren’t the same? Am I alone in them?
That might be the most terrifying outcome of all. I don’t want to find out that everything I’ve been feeling is one-sided. It would hurt like hell.
Mallory quietly makes her way into the bathroom while I sit at the edge of my bed and pick nervously at my nails as I wait for Brent to text me. Mallory doesn’t take long in there, coming out only a few minutes later and sitting next to me on the bed, and she links our arms together with a sigh. “I’m sure the talk will go okay, Jule. You don’t need to worry.”
And even though she’s saying that, I can tell by the softness in her tone that she’s not even sure about herself anymore.
This could be it for me and Brent. The end of what I’ve come to see as the best time I’ve had in my life. He opened up a different side of me, one that no one else would be able to, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to find someone like him in the future. I want him to be my future. My heart races when my phone pings with a text from Brent and I lift from the bed with ragged breaths while giving Mallory the most confident smile I can manage. “Wish me luck.”
She gives me a thumbs up, then silently watches me walk out of the suite as my heart falls into my stomach with a heavy thud.
It takes a short time, shorter than I had hoped, for the elevator to open up to his floor, and I slowly make my way down the hall to his door. Brent opens it swiftly, a blank expression on his face as he leans against the door frame and crosses his arms, then sighs.
“Why is he looking at me that way?”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and I hope he’s trying to figure out how to tell me he feels the same way. Instead though, he gives me a look full of pity before saying, “This was supposed to be temporary, and I think our time has come to an end. I’ve helped you all that I could.”
Mallory told me he felt the same way and convinced me to come here and talk to him, but now I feel like a fool. I shake my head and start backing away from him, tears already clouding my vision as I look up at him.
I need to get out of here fast.