Chapter Sixteen Julia #3
Julia walked through the bedroom to the spacious bathroom, then up another flight of stairs to the guest room, before heading back down. Harry didn’t say anything. He just watched her, giving her space to think.
“How much is it?” Julia finally asked, once they had gone back downstairs to the kitchen.
“Within our budget,” Harry said evasively.
Which meant nothing if your budget was limitless.
“Harry, you can’t keep paying for everything.” It created such a fundamental imbalance in their relationship. If it was his house, paid for with his money, what did that make her?
“Why have money if I can’t spend it on things that matter to me?” Harry said, challenging her. “If you hate this house, I won’t say anything more, but I think we could be happy here.”
New Zealand was over, Julia reminded herself.
They were no longer two young people running away from their problems—playacting at being adults, paying their rent month to month, falling in love as easily as breathing.
They were engaged now, and putting down roots.
Facing the things they had been running from.
Their relationship would never again be as carefree and effortless as in New Zealand.
But perhaps it could be something stronger.
Everyone always said that marriages took work, and maintenance, as if they were machines falling constantly into disrepair.
Well, Julia had never been afraid of hard work.
Anything worth having was worth fighting for.
She could see a new life unfurling before her and Harry.
They could decorate this house with cozy furniture—not the antiques his mother preferred, but warm furniture that begged to be lived in.
They could wander this neighborhood hand in hand, sit at a wine bar for a glass of merlot.
They could seek out new friends, new rhythms, new adventures.
“All right,” she heard herself say.
Harry grinned. “Is that a yes to the house?”
“Yes.” She hoped she wouldn’t regret this.
“Oh, good. I couldn’t have let the Thai food sit out there any longer.” Harry moved eagerly to the front door, where he grabbed a brown paper bag from Uber Eats.
Julia stared at him, surprised, and Harry grinned. “What? It’s our tradition now, right?”
Back in New Zealand, the night they had moved into their shared apartment, they had ordered Thai food, which they had eaten sitting cross-legged on the floor, because they hadn’t yet owned a stitch of furniture.
Worse, the takeout place hadn’t sent them any chopsticks, so they’d grabbed fistfuls of pad thai with their bare hands.
“You know what,” Julia said slowly as Harry laid the takeout boxes on the floor before the fireplace. “I think the takeout can wait.”
Hearing her tone, Harry grinned and started across the room toward her. For a moment there, Julia felt the need to avert her eyes; he seemed bigger or brighter or more impossibly handsome than she could bear to look at.
Then his hands were around her waist and he was hoisting her up, setting her gently on the kitchen island. Julia had always loved the way he lifted her, as if it were completely effortless. As if she weighed nothing at all.
The marble counters—how impractical to have marble where you cooked, she thought distractedly—felt cool through the silk of her dress.
Julia shifted, wrapping her legs around Harry to anchor him in place, and leaned down to kiss him.
She wondered if this was what he always felt like, being taller, bending down to her.
“Should we move?” Harry growled, when they finally broke apart. “These counters are a little tall for what I’m planning.”
“I didn’t know you were an engineer,” Julia teased, breathless and a little dizzy.
“More like an expert in a very specific field of geometry.”
“You make an excellent point. Let’s see if the bathroom counters offer us a better angle,” she agreed.
“I don’t think we need a counter at all.”
Harry scooped her up in a single motion, his hands cupping her ass to hold her weight flush against him.
Julia hooked an arm around his shoulder, reaching with the other hand to unfasten his pants.
Her blazer had been tossed aside, and she wondered dimly when that had happened; she didn’t remember removing it.
Harry had always been mysteriously good at getting her clothes off.
Their faces were very close, their breaths intermingling.
Julia’s dress was bunched up around her waist, her thighs slick around Harry’s torso.
She let out a little cry, and her back arced instinctively as he angled her against him, moving her slowly up and down.
It was all so acutely delicious: the sensations of friction and heat, the salty tang of him as she nipped at his jawline, the way he held her so perfectly.
That was the thing about Harry. There seemed to be no limits to what he could do, the things he could make her feel. Sometimes it frightened her, the sheer force of what she felt for him, physical and romantic all at once, and almost blinding in intensity.
“I love you,” she whispered, holding tight to him. He was the only solid thing in a delirious, spinning world.