Next Stop Love, #1

by Rachel Stockbridge

  Since he was in the city, Julian figured he might as well check with Detective Flores to see if they’d arrested Greyson. Then he could go home. It wasn’t even noon, and he was already exhausted—an issue compounded by his heart’s insistence on looking for Beatrice in places his head knew she wouldn’t be.

  By the time he mounted the precinct steps, he’d trained his eyes to the ground in front of him so he wouldn’t keep looking for her. Which was probably why he didn’t notice the person barreling out the front doors. They rammed into each other, the momentum spinning them around.

  “Shit.” Julian barely kept his feet, his hand going out to the shorter person’s elbow to keep them from taking a swan dive into the sidewalk. “Sorry.”

  Accusatory gray eyes flicked up to meet his and pierced him straight through. Beatrice.

  Julian’s heart threw itself hard against his ribs like it was trying to leap the space between them. It was a leap it couldn’t make, though. The chasm he’d created was too wide.

  Beatrice looked strangely subdued in the dull grays and browns she wore. Her new coat was a bland, charcoal parka, the hood lined in faux fur. She wasn’t even wearing her floral hiking boots. She had on a pair of perfectly normal, perfectly boring black hightops. Only her bag—canvas with a rainbow of psychedelic florals printed all over—nodded to the usual riot of color she presented to the world.

  “I’m sorry,” Julian said again, releasing her elbow. It was a grossly inadequate thing to say, but he didn’t know how to make things right. He’d gone over it in his head dozens of times, trying to come up with something that didn’t sound like petty, meaningless excuses. But if he’d ever landed on anything even remotely acceptable, he couldn’t remember it now.

  Beatrice fell back a step, a puff of air leaving her lungs and blowing away in the chilly breeze. She seemed about to say something, but then her gaze snapped to the ground, and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

  “Bee?” He reached for her, an instinct to comfort briefly overriding his knowledge that he was the reason she needed comforting. He checked himself before he made contact, curling his hands into loose fists at his sides.

  She shook her head, the toe of her shoe finding the edge of the stair. “I don’t—You—” With a frustrated growl, she turned and marched down the last few steps, head down, arms folded around her middle.

  For a split second, Julian froze. She clearly didn’t want to talk to him. He should let her walk away, and take it as a sign to stop agonizing over whether there was any way to fix what he’d broken. He couldn’t take back what he said, and he didn’t have any right to expect her to forgive him.

  But dammit, he couldn’t let her slip away from him without even trying to hold on. He couldn’t bail on her again. Not without a fight.

  “Bee,” he called, jogging after her until he caught up.

  She didn’t slow down. She wouldn’t even look at him. Her gaze remained fixed stubbornly on the sidewalk.

  “What are you doing in the city all by yourself?” he tried, because he didn’t know how else to get her to talk to him. “What if something happened and you had to go to the hospital? Isn’t anyone taking care of you?”

  “Well, you know,” Beatrice said, a surprising amount of venom in her voice. “When you’ve got a wholesome little organized life to keep up with, sometimes your bullshit planning overrides your common sense.”

  Julian stopped short, the blow hitting him right in the gut. “I . . . That was a shitty thing to say. I shouldn’t’ve—”

  “No, I get it,” Beatrice snipped, spinning on her heel to face him. Her eyes were too bright, and her cheeks and nose were flushed pink. “I do. I know I’m weird. I know I get so hyper-focused on checking all the boxes that I forget to make sure that all those boxes are taking me somewhere worth going. I know all my stupid problems seem insignificant compared with some of the stuff you’ve had to deal with—”

  “Bee—” Julian began, moving to touch her arm.

  She flinched back, a tear cutting a track down her cheek. “You didn’t have to kiss me,” she said in a choked voice, hugging herself tighter. “I know you think I’m this . . . sheltered, naïve little petal, but you could have just said you weren’t attracted to me. I would have understood. You didn’t have to—You didn’t—”

  Julian couldn’t take it anymore. He closed the last gap of space between them and cupped her face in his hands, trapping her gaze. “Anyone who thinks you’re a sheltered petal isn’t paying attention. You’re the toughest person I know.”

  She let out a breathy sob, squeezing her eyes shut. “No, I’m not.”

  “Of course you are,” Julian insisted, bending his head to see her face better. “Are you kidding? You’re smart, and beautiful, and compassionate, and brave. You shine daylight over the whole world when you laugh. You’re—You’re the most wonderful, precious little gem of a person I’ve ever known in my life.”

  Beatrice pressed both hands over her face as another sob shook her shoulders.

  Julian wrapped his arms around her, at a loss for what else to do. “Please don’t cry,” he said, his voice hoarse. Miraculously, she leaned into him, her forehead pressing against his collarbone through his sweatshirt. He bent his head, her thick, soft hair brushing his cheek. “I fucked up. I shouldn’t have said any of that, at the hospital. You’ve got every right to hate me.”

  Beatrice made a furious sound between her teeth, her fingers digging into the fabric of his coat. “What’s wrong with you?”

  A lot of things. Though he got the impression she wasn’t looking for an actual list. “Bee—”

  She pushed out of his embrace, her eyes flashing behind the sheen of tears. “Are you suicidal? Is that it?”

  “What?”

  “They said you went to talk to Greyson yesterday,” Beatrice said, throwing an open hand out towards the precinct’s entrance. “By yourself. And he threatened to kill you. Again.”

  “Well,” Julian said, fumbling for an explanation that would calm her down, “I mean . . . I—I didn’t think he’d try to kill me in his apartment. He usually tries to shift responsibility to someone else, so—”

  “And that’s supposed to make it okay?” Beatrice demanded, her shoulders going up in a caustic shrug. “It’s been less than a week since he arranged to have those assholes drag you into an alley to kill you, but it’s fine to waltz on over to his house in pursuit of more death threats because, hey, he’ll probably wait until you’re out of the building before calling in the next round of hitmen. Yeah. Great plan.”

  A cautious little seed of hope, which Julian thought was long dead, moved in his heart, its roots inching tentatively down. It didn’t make a lot of sense—Beatrice was reaming him out, as she had every right to do. It didn’t seem like ideal conditions for hope to grow. But she wasn’t wishing him dead, or accusing him of lying to her. If a lifetime of sorting his sister’s affectionate, protective rants from her angry, accusatory rants was anything to go by, Beatrice was upset because she cared about him. Maybe he hadn’t fucked things up as badly as he feared. Maybe there was a chance he could make things right.

  If he could just come up with the right thing to say.

  “I’m sorry,” he began.

  “Don’t apologize,” Beatrice snapped. “Just—Just—” She balled her hands into fists at her sides with another frustrated sound in her throat. “You keep talking like everything bad that happens to you is your fault. But it’s not. It’s not. And I don’t understand why you’re so dead set on making everyone else think it is.”

  “I . . .” Julian pushed his hair back with one hand, trying to find the right words. Years of questionable relationships and bad luck had put him out of the habit of being open about this kind of thing. He couldn’t hope for eloquence. But maybe honesty mattered more anyway.

  Julian sucked in a lungful of damp, chilly air, his hand falling to his side. “I was in such a bad place when I met you. It seemed like my whole life was mad
e up of a series of disasters, and I never had a chance to recover before the next one came along. If it wasn’t losing people I loved, it was dealing with Greyson. Or breaking my hand. Or getting mixed up with gangs because I was too stupid to question what was going on. Or not being able to hold down a job because everywhere I worked went out of business, or downsized, or—or who knows what else. I couldn’t get on my feet. Every time I tried, I got knocked back down.

  “And then you came along. And it was like . . . like you put out your hand and said there was a way out from under all the cave-ins and debris that I’d been trapped under. You made me think maybe the disasters didn’t have to go on forever. That I could . . . rebuild. And maybe I could be okay.” He swallowed the hard lump in his throat that was making it hard to speak. “How could I not love you for that?”

  Beatrice’s mouth twisted, and she dropped her gaze to the pavement. “Julian—”

  “I love you, Bee.” He touched her cheek, and she turned her face into his palm, her eyes tight shut. “I think I loved you from the second you started sassing me in that library. Your optimism, and your kindness, and your humor. Everything about you. And it scared the shit out of me. I was terrified that someday another disaster would hit, and you’d end up right in its path. And I didn’t know how to protect you.”

  “You don’t—” Beatrice set her jaw and slid her arms inside his coat, hugging him tight. “Dammit, Julian.”

  Julian held her close and pressed a kiss against her hair before he could think better of it. “I was so scared I was going to lose you.”

  “But you didn’t,” Beatrice said, her voice muffled in the fabric of his sweatshirt. “I’m right here. I’m fine.”

  “I know. I fucked up. Just tell me how to make it up to you, and I’ll do it. Anything.”

  Beatrice shook her head. “That’s . . . God. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with so much crap. I’m sorry you lost your parents, and you got stranded with a terrible step-family. I’m sorry no one was around to help you when you needed it most.” She tipped her head up to look at him, her eyes stubborn and about as far from delicate as anyone could get. “But you can’t just take yourself out of the picture because you have some stupid, misplaced guilt about how you’re going to ruin my life. Like you don’t make me laugh, or make me feel safe. Like you don’t remind me how to breathe. Like you don’t even matter. You can’t do that to me, Julian. You can’t. I love you too, you colossal moron.”

  The cautious seed of hope in Julian’s chest shot its roots deep and wide, sprouts poking up everywhere like wildflowers in a wide, sunny field. He was afraid to breathe, in case he heard her wrong. But there was no hate in her eyes. No resentment. Just that unfathomable compassion he’d never done anything to earn. “You do?”

  “Well, yeah,” Beatrice said, her cheeks coloring as she tugged lightly on one of his hoodie strings. “What, you think I’d leap headlong into a knife fight for just anybody?”

  Julian felt himself smile. “I wouldn’t put it past you. You did save me from getting knifed the first time I met you.”

  She wrinkled her nose, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Yeah, but . . . that was still you.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. His heart was too full to translate what he felt into words. He pressed his lips against her temple, her cheek. She smelled like flowers, and coffee, and coming home.

  “I love you, Bee,” he murmured. “So much.”

  She made a tiny sound on an exhale and turned her mouth up to his.

  Julian sank his fingers into her wild, beautiful hair, pouring all his hope and love into the kiss. He wanted to show her how much he missed her. How sorry he was that he’d hurt her.

  Her hands moved over his back, to his shoulders, her body melding to his. She responded to his touch as though he’d never let her down. As though she trusted him. As though she loved him.

  With one last kiss, Julian pulled back, his fingers trapped in Beatrice’s hair. There was still one small problem. “I can’t buy a house.”

  Beatrice’s eyes, which had been half-lidded and unfocused a moment before, snapped open, her eyebrows pinching together. “What?”

  “I can’t buy a house. Not anytime soon. I had to quit at the art center, so I’m back to looking for work again. And I think I want to look into art school—I was talking to my boss about it when I turned in my resignation, and he says he can help me work out the portfolio stuff.” Julian slung his backpack off his shoulders to hang from one elbow and dug around inside until he found the spiral notebook that held all his notes from the last few days. Handwritten lists and charts, and printouts of applications and portfolio requirements for several colleges. They were disorganized, and he really needed a better place to store them than between the pages of a spiral notebook, because they kept falling out. Somewhere in all that mess was the paper he wanted. “There’s a college up in Syracuse that seems to have really good teachers, and I could do an art education program there, so I could get into teaching once I was done. But that’s at least four years of the starving artist track, which means I’ll probably be stuck renting crappy apartments or living with crappy housemates. And that’s without factoring in grad school, which is a whole other beast—”

  “What are these?” Beatrice asked, pulling the papers down so she could see them better. “You wrote up plans? To . . . to figure out when you can buy a house?”

  “Not very good ones.” Julian found a page where he’d scrawled some math. Even his most optimistic reckonings of future savings looked bleak. “There’s no way I’m buying real estate of any kind for at least a decade. I’ll be lucky if I can swing for a shitty car in the next two years.”

  “Julian. Stop a second. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You said you wanted a house and a steady paycheck,” Julian said, meeting her eyes. “I can’t guarantee either one right now. I just want you to know what you’re getting into here.”

  Beatrice blinked, her gaze flicking to the notebook and then back to him. Her expression was blank, her mouth slack, as though he’d started speaking gibberish sometime in the last thirty seconds.

  “I’m not even sure I could get a gig teaching art after I graduated,” Julian said. He was rambling, but he couldn’t stand the silence. “Art funding is so patchy. I could end up either splitting time between multiple schools or moonlighting as a dishwasher or something. Or only being a dishwasher, and questioning all my life choices while I pay off student loans on a minimum wage salary for the next thousand years—”

  Beatrice huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh, her smile sparking life into the dull, gray world. She grabbed his coat and pushed up on her toes, her mouth pressing against his.

  The papers in Julian’s hand rustled as he grasped her waist to steady her. He could taste the smile on her lips as she kissed him again and again.

  “You don’t have to buy me a house, you ridiculous person,” she said, bouncing onto her heels again. “The house was symbolic.”

  “But you said—”

  “—that I wanted a place where I can breathe. And you already gave me that. All that other stuff doesn’t matter, as long as I’ve got you.”

  Julian touched her chin with his thumb, brushing an off-center cluster of freckles. He waited for some new anxiety to overtake him. Some new reason this couldn’t work. Could never work.

  But the only thing overtaking him was a warm glow of joy. He didn’t know what he’d ever done to deserve the love of someone as beautiful and good as Beatrice. He just knew he was going to do everything in his power to make her happy, for as long as she let him.

  “You really should be resting.” He found her hand and threaded their fingers together. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Beatrice stood in her favorite hole-in-the-wall cafe in Syracuse, listening for her order to be called over the din of students and nine-to-fivers getting their mid-afternoon fix. She was payin
g less attention to the textbook in her hands than she should have been, but she couldn’t quite get herself to focus.

  It was a gorgeous summer day, and the cafe’s doors were propped wide open to let the lazy breeze diffuse the scent of sun-warmed air into the earthy aroma of fresh coffee grounds.

  It felt like a new start, after all the stress of the past few months. For a while, it had seemed like Beatrice’s life had turned into a courtroom drama. Vito and the other two men who had attacked Julian took plea deals—putting Vito behind bars for six years, and each of his cronies for at least four—so that part was over with quickly. But Greyson’s trial had dragged on for weeks. Beatrice ended up dropping the two online courses she’d enrolled in for the spring semester because the trial was taking up so much of her energy.

  Looking back on it, she was surprised she and Julian had made it through in one piece. He’d been under as much stress as Beatrice. Probably more, since he had a longer history with Greyson, and very little faith in the system. And very little support, besides his sister, whose support was like that of an angry Rottweiler. And Beatrice, who was never sure if her presence was actually helping. Especially since there was an angry bulldog in her gut that wanted to join in whenever Fabiana’s inner Rottweiler started growling at threats.

  Beatrice had all but forced her family to act as backup support for Julian. It was easy enough to get Nath on board—he’d practically adopted Julian into the family already. Beatrice’s parents took more work. They both seemed stuck in over-protective mode, after Beatrice’s stay in the hospital, and after some of the nastier details about Beatrice’s relationship with Greyson came out. Joyce felt guilty for not realizing things were so toxic, and Mike seemed to think the best way to keep Beatrice safe was some kind of Rapunzel situation. Unfortunately for Julian, that meant his reputation was taking the brunt of their leftover panic.