by Ana Huang
I was less serene. Not only had I wasted an hour being grilled by the police, but I’d also missed the rest of the game.
“Tell me why every time I run into trouble, you’re involved,” I said through gritted teeth as the metro came into view.
“It’s not my fault you chose to walk down that street and you chose to stay for a merry interlude instead of going on your way,” Jules retorted. “I had it handled.”
I snorted, my shoes pounding a furious rhythm on the steps. I could’ve taken the escalator, but I needed to work off my aggravation. Jules must’ve felt the same way, because she was right there next to me, pissing me off.
“Merry interlude? Who talks like that? And there was nothing merry about it, I promise.” I reached the turnstiles and yanked out my wallet. “Too bad the police didn’t take you into custody too. You’re a menace to society.”
“According to who? You?” She looked me over with disdain.
“Yes.” I gave her a cold smile. “Me and every person who’s had the misfortune of running into you.”
It was a horrible thing to say, but between the letters, a long shift at the hospital, and my general existential crisis, I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable.
“God, you. Are,” Jules slammed her metro card on the reader with unnecessary force, “The. Worst.”
I passed through the turnstile behind her. “No, that would be your sense of self-preservation. It’s common sense to give muggers what they want.” The more I thought about it, the more her actions baffled and infuriated me. “What if you couldn’t disarm him? What if he had another weapon you didn’t know about? You could’ve fucking died!”
Jules’s face flushed. “Stop yelling at me. You’re not my father.”
“I’m not yelling!”
We stopped beneath the schedule board announcing the arrival of the next train in eight minutes. The station was empty save for a couple making out on one of the benches and a suited business type at the far end of the platform, and it was quiet enough for me to hear the furious rush of blood in my ears.
We glared at each other, our chests heaving with emotion. I wanted to shake her for being so stupid as to put her life in danger over a fucking phone and wallet.
Just because I didn’t like her didn’t mean I wanted her dead.
Not all the time, anyway.
I expected another snarky retort, but Jules turned away and lapsed into silence.
It was completely out of character and goddamn unnerving. I couldn’t remember the last time she let me have the last word.
I exhaled sharply through my nose, forcing myself to calm down and think clearly about the situation.
No matter how I felt about her, Jules was Ava’s friend, and she’d just survived an armed mugging attempt. Unless she was a damn robot, she couldn’t be as unaffected by what happened as she appeared.
I examined her out of the corner of my eye, taking in her tight jaw and ramrod-straight back. Her expression was blank—a little too much so.
My anger cooled, and I rubbed a hand over my jaw, torn. Jules and I didn’t comfort each other. We didn’t so much as say bless you when the other sneezed. But…
Dammit.
“You okay?” I asked gruffly. I couldn’t not check on someone after they almost died, no matter who they were. It went against everything I believed in as a doctor and a human being.
“I’m fine.” Jules tucked her hair behind her ear, her voice flat, but I detected a slight shake in her hand.
Adrenaline rushes were crazy things. They made you stronger, more focused. They made you feel invincible. But once the high disappeared and you crashed back to earth, you had to deal with the aftermath—the shaky hands, the weak legs, the worries you’d staved off for a brief moment in time only to all come rushing back in one giant flood.
I would bet my last dollar Jules was in the midst of a post-rush crash.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. I got the gun away from him before he could do anything.” Jules stared straight ahead, so intense I half-expected her to burn a hole in the station wall.
“Didn’t realize you were a secret super soldier.” I attempted to lighten the air, though I was curious as hell as to what happened. We’d talked to the police separately, so I hadn’t heard her recount how she’d disarmed Beanie.
“You don’t have to be a super soldier to disarm someone.” She wrinkled her nose. Finally. A sign of normality. “I took self-defense classes when I was younger. They included learning how to handle a mugger.”
Huh. I wouldn’t have figured her for someone who took self-defense classes.
The train pulled into the station before I could respond. There were no empty seats since the stop before this one was a popular hub, so we stood shoulder-to-shoulder near the doors until we reached Hazelburg, the Maryland suburb that housed Thayer’s campus.
Jules and I used to be next door neighbors when she and Ava lived together their senior year, but Ava had since moved to the city and I’d rented a new place. There were too many unwanted memories in my old house.
Still, Hazelburg was a small town, and my and Jules’s houses were only a twenty-minute walk from each other.
We unconsciously fell into step beside each other after exiting the station.
“Don’t tell Ava or anyone else what happened,” Jules said when we reached the corner where we had to split—her to the left, me to the right. “I don’t want them to worry.”
“I won’t.” She was right. Ava would worry, and there was no point in getting her worked up over something that had already happened. “You sure you’re okay?”
I almost offered to walk Jules home, but that might be too much. We’d reached our limits of civility with each other, as evidenced by the next words out of her mouth.
“Yes.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger over the opposite sleeve of her coat, her expression distracted. “Don’t be late to Ava’s party on Saturday. I realize punctuality is not one of your few virtues, but it’s important you’re on time.”
My sympathy evaporated in a gust of annoyance. “I won’t be late,” I said through clenched teeth. “Don’t worry about me.”
I walked away before she could respond, not bothering to say goodbye. Jules had to ruin it every. Single. Fucking. Time.
Maybe her prickliness was a defense mechanism, but that was none of my business. I wasn’t here to peel back her layers like we were in one of those damned romance novels Ava liked so much.
If Jules wanted to be insufferable, I had every right to save myself from suffering by removing myself from her presence.
The wind nipped at my face and howled through the trees, underscoring how quiet the streets were. Hazelberg was one of the safest towns in the U.S. but…
The way Jules’s hand shook while we were waiting for the metro. The tension in her shoulders. The paleness of her skin.
My brisk walk slowed to a meander.
You’re reading too much into one movement. Just go home, man.
So what if it was dark and she was alone? The chances of anything happening to her were slim, even if she was a magnet for trouble.
I closed my eyes, unable to believe I was even contemplating doing what I was about to do.
“God motherfucking dammit.” I bit out the words before I stopped and double backed in the direction Jules had gone in. I set my jaw, growing angrier with each step.
Angry at my conscience, which reared its head at the worst times. Angry at Jules, for existing; at Ava, for being friends with her, and at Thayer’s housing coordinator, for placing them in the same room and therefore making their friendship an inevitability all those years ago.
Fate liked to screw with me, and it’d never screwed me over harder than when it’d introduced a certain redhead into my life.
It didn’t take me long to catch up with Jules. I stayed far enough behind her so she wouldn’t notice me but close enough I could see her. The bright colors of her hair and c
oat made it easy, even in the dark.
I felt like a total creep, but if she saw me following her, we’d get into another argument, and I was too tired for that shit.
Luckily, we arrived at her house in less than ten minutes, and I relaxed when I saw the glow of lights behind the curtains. Stella, another college friend of Ava’s and Jules’s roommate, must be home already.
Jules walked onto the porch, reached into her bag…and paused.
I tensed again and edged behind a tree on the opposite sidewalk in case she turned around, but she didn’t. She just stood there, frozen, for a full minute.
What the hell was she doing?
I was about to cross the street in case she was in shock or something when she finally moved again. She took the keys out of her bag, unlocked the door, and disappeared inside.
I released my breath in one long, slow sigh. It formed a tiny white puff in the wintry air, and I waited another minute, my eyes lingering on the spot where Jules had stood, before I turned and walked home.
4
JULES
“How was your date?” Stella looked up from her phone when I entered the living room.
“He didn’t show.” I unbuttoned my coat and hung it on the brass tree by the front door. It took me two tries, thanks to the tremble in my hand.
It’s the cold. Not the attempted mugging or the brief moment of paralysis I’d experienced on the porch when I—
Stop. Don’t think about it.
Stella’s eyes widened. “No way. What an asshole.”
I cracked a smile. Stella rarely cursed, so it always amused me when she let a bad word slip.
“It’s okay. I dodged a bullet. I mean, have you seen his dating app picture? That freakin’ fish. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.” I peeled off my gloves and took off my shoes, avoiding my friend’s eyes while I tried to suck enough oxygen into my lungs.
It hadn’t taken me long to disarm the mugger, but the sensation of being helpless, even for a few minutes, resurfaced memories better left buried.
Wood digging into my back. Sour breath on my neck. Hands on—
“Jules.”
I startled and almost knocked over the coat tree.
I’d held onto my calm during the aftermath of the attempted mugging, but now that I was safely home, my body finally started to process what happened.
It wasn’t pretty.
My heart was a frantic drumbeat in my chest, my stomach a storm of nausea. Stella’s presence was the only thing keeping me upright.
Her brow creased. “Are you okay? You’ve been staring into space for the past five minutes. I called your name twice.”
“Yep.” I pasted on a bright smile. “I just spaced. Thinking of ways to get back at Todd.”
I wasn’t going to waste another drop of energy on the asshole, but Stella didn’t know that.
She tilted her head, her catlike green eyes narrowing. As a fashion blogger and influencer, she was glued to her phone ninety percent of the time, but she was also more observant than people gave her credit for.
“You wouldn’t waste more energy on that guy,” she said.
Okay, there was observant and there was creepy. Maybe those gross wheatgrass smoothies she loved so much gave her superpowers, like reading minds.
“Seriously, I’m fine.” I upped the wattage of my smile. I had no qualms about turning to my friends for advice, but only when they could do something about it. Otherwise, there was no point making them worry. “I just want to watch a movie, eat ice cream, and forget about Todd the Toad.”
A spark of suspicion remained in Stella’s eyes, but thankfully, she didn’t press the issue. “We have a pint of salted caramel ice cream left,” she said. “Legally Blonde rewatch while we finish it?”
“Always.” I never got tired of watching a perfectly coiffed Elle Woods kick ass. “I’m gonna shower first. You do whatever you have to do.”
“Going through my DMs.” She sighed. “Not that I’ll ever get through them all.”
“You don’t have to reply to all of them, you know.”
Stella had hundreds of thousands of followers, and I couldn’t imagine how many messages flooded her inbox on a daily basis.
“I want to. Unless they’re creeps.” She waved a hand in the air. “Go do your thing. I’ll be here.”
While Stella returned to her phone, I entered our shared bathroom and turned on the shower, my smile fading.
I waited until the air thickened with steam before I stepped into the tub and rested my forehead against the slick tile wall, letting the drum of the water wash away my unwanted memories.
My senior year of high school. Alastair and Max and Adeline—
Stop.
“Get yourself together, Jules,” I whispered fiercely.
I wasn’t a young, helpless girl trapped in Ohio anymore.
I was in a whole other state, about to gain everything I had ever dreamed of.
Money. Freedom. Security.
And I’d be damned if I let anyone take that away from me.
5
JULES
By the time Ava’s surprise party rolled around, I’d shoved the mugging attempt into the dim recesses of my mind. Distraction was the key to repressing memories, and luckily, I had enough distractions to keep me busy for the next five years.
“I can’t believe you guys did this.” Ava turned slowly, taking in the restaurant that had been transformed into a veritable party hall with wide eyes. And by party hall, I meant a seven-foot ice sculpture, multiple gourmet food stations, a live DJ, a chocolate fountain, and a temporary dance floor, all courtesy of her richer-than-God boyfriend. “You absolutely didn’t have to.”
“No, but we wanted to.” I flashed a mischievous grin. “Plus, it was a good excuse to get a chocolate fountain. I’ve always wanted to see one in real life.” I hugged her and breathed in her familiar perfume. The scent triggered a wave of nostalgia.
Ava had been the first person I’d met at Thayer. We’d hit it off right away, and I would never forget how she stuck by me when Josh insisted she end our friendship. She and Josh were extremely close, so the fact she stood up to him for me meant more than she would ever know.
We still hung out after graduation, but not as often as I would like. Part of me wished we could go back to the days when Ava, Stella, Bridget, and I would stay up all night, binge-eating cheese puffs and listening to the girls in the dorm room next to ours scream at each other because one of them hooked up with the other’s boyfriend.
“Happy birthday, babe.” I smiled, not wanting to be a downer despite the melancholy gripping me. “Surprised?”
“Definitely.” Ava turned to her boyfriend and swatted him on the arm, though her eyes sparkled with delight. “You told me we were going to lunch!”
“We are at lunch.” A shadow of a smile graced Alex Volkov’s lips. Ava was probably the only person who could pull so much emotion out of him—yes, that was sarcasm—and the only one who could hit him, even playfully, without losing a limb. “Technically.”
I gasped. “Was that a joke?” I looked around at Ava and Stella and purposefully skipped over Josh, who stood on the other side of Ava. “Alex made a joke. Quick, someone mark down the date and time.”
“Hilarious,” he said flatly.
He radiated CEO vibes even in a button-down shirt and jeans, which was as casual as Alex ever got. His eyes glinted like jade-colored ice chips in a face that could’ve been carved by Michelangelo himself, and his expression was cold enough to give someone freezer burn.
Whatever. He could glare all he wanted, but as Ava’s friend, I was immune to his wrath, and he knew it.
“You surprised me with a birthday party once,” he told Ava, his voice softening a smidge. “I figured it was past time I returned the favor.”
I could practically see Ava melt.
“I think I just got a toothache from the sweetness,” Stella said as Alex whispered something else in Ava’s ear t
hat made her blush.
“We need to book a dentist appointment, stat,” I agreed.
Despite our jokes, we were grinning like idiots. Alex and Ava had been through a lot, and it was nice seeing them so happy, though the word was relative where Alex was concerned.
Meanwhile, Josh lounged against the dessert table, his expression darker than his black shirt.
He used to be best friends with Alex until their falling out, which was a whole other story unto itself. They were civil now, but there was a big difference between civil and friends.
“Wipe the sour expression off your face, Dr. Killjoy,” I said. “You’re bringing down the vibes.”
“If my face bothers you so much, don’t look at it,” he drawled. “Unless you can’t help yourself, which is understandable.”
I scowled. I’d planned the party with help from Stella and Alex, and while I’d been tempted to exclude Josh from the guest list, he was Ava’s brother. His presence was expected, like E. coli on undercooked chicken.
Before I could respond to his conceited statement, an excited squeal punctured the air, followed by a loud clatter and two dozen heads swiveling toward the entrance.
I followed their wide-eyed stares to the couple that had just entered, flanked by two suited bodyguards the size of mountains.
My face lit up. “Bridget!”
She grinned and waved. “Surprise.”
“Oh my God!” I rushed over to her at the same time as Ava and Stella, and we collided in a messy, laughing group hug that would’ve ended with us on the floor had Bridget’s fiancé Rhys and bodyguard Booth not steadied us. “I thought you couldn’t make it!”
“My scheduler found an event at the embassy that coincidentally ‘required’ my presence this weekend.” Bridget’s blue eyes glowed with mischief. “My meeting with the ambassador ran long, or I would’ve gotten here sooner.” She gave Ava a one-on-one hug after we untangled ourselves. “Happy birthday, sweetie.”