by Ana Huang
It wasn’t the first time I’d been judged—for my looks and my family, the career I chose and the clothes I wore, the way I laughed too loudly when I was supposed to be demure and asserted myself too boldly when I was supposed to be invisible. I was used to shaking off criticism, but the sneers and side eyes accumulated over time, and I’d gotten to the point where I was just tired.
Tired of working twice as hard as everyone else to be taken seriously and fighting even harder to prove my worth.
I shook my head and tried to refocus on the documents before me. I didn’t have time for a pity party. I needed to finish fact checking a case today, and the clinic closed in three hours.
I’d gotten through half the papers when the door swung open and Josh waltzed in, carrying a small box from Crumble & Bake.
“Oh look, if it isn’t—” My favorite devil’s spawn. I bit off the rest of my words when Josh raised a challenging brow. “My best friend’s brother.”
It would take some adjusting before I curbed my knee-jerk instinct to insult him the second I saw his face.
“Astute observation.” He set the box on the table and took the seat next to me. A whiff of his cologne floated over, mingling with the sweet scent wafting from the box. “Let me guess. You’ve annoyed the rest of the staff so much they banished you to the kitchen?”
“If you had a modicum of observational skill, you’d notice there isn’t a desk for me yet.” I forced myself not to stare at the pastries. Don’t give in to the temptation of sweets. “I’m working out of the kitchen until it comes in. And,” I pointed my pen at him, triumph filling my veins, “you broke the truce.”
“No, I didn’t.” Josh rolled up his sleeves, revealing tanned, lightly veined forearms. A heavy watch glinted on his wrist, and as someone with an odd thing for men and watches, I would’ve found the sight hot had he not been, well, him. “Sarcasm isn’t the same as an insult. I’m sarcastic with my friends all the time. It’s how I show my love.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I was surprised I didn’t enter another dimension. “Yes, you obviously meant to show your love for me with your statement.”
“No, I meant to show my love for you with this.” Josh lengthened his drawl with exaggerated slowness, like he was speaking to a child. He opened the box, and my eyes zeroed in on the cupcake sitting smack dab in the middle.
Salted caramel. My favorite.
My stomach emitted a low rumble of approval. I’d been so caught up in work I hadn’t eaten since my paltry lunch of a salad and smoothie a few hours ago.
Josh’s mouth lifted into a smirk while I shuffled my papers loudly to hide the sound. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of salivating over anything he bought.
“Consider it my official olive branch.” He pushed the box toward me. “Along with me not mentioning how you broke the truce by insulting my observational skills, which are excellent, by the way.”
Only Josh could claim credit for not doing something he just did.
Instead of arguing with him, I poked at the cupcake with suspicion. “Did you poison it?” There was a difference between being civil and buying someone their favorite cupcake unprompted.
“Nah, I was in a rush. Maybe next time.”
“Hilarious. Netflix should give you a standup special.” I plucked the cupcake from the box and examined it more closely for signs of tampering.
“I know.” Josh oozed cockiness. “It’s one of my many wonderful attributes.”
I fought another eye roll. There were probably a hundred poor souls walking around with low self-esteem so Josh Chen could sail through life with an ego the size of Jupiter. Satan must’ve been distracted the day he created his hellspawn and poured a little too much obnoxiousness into Josh’s beaker.
“How did you know salted caramel is my favorite?” I squinted at a tiny black mark on the cupcake wrapper.
A mere scratch from an errant marker, or proof of poison? Hmmm…
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.” Josh nodded at the venti drink on the table. “Every time I see you, you’re inhaling a caramel mocha the size of your head.”
Okay, fair point. My love for all things caramel-flavored wasn’t exactly a secret.
“Keep it up and you’ll get diabetes,” he added. “All that sugar isn’t good for you.”
“So you’re feeding me more sugar in the hopes I’ll become diabetic.” I tapped my pen against the table with my free hand. “I knew you had nefarious intentions.”
Josh sighed and pinched his brow. “Jules, eat the damn cupcake.”
I stifled a grin. I was mostly fucking with him at this point, and I really was starving. If I was going to die, I might as well die eating something I loved.
I peeled back the wrapper and took a small bite. Warm, delicious sweetness burst onto my tongue, and I couldn’t hold back a soft moan of appreciation.
Nothing beat a salted caramel cupcake after hours of work.
Josh watched while I ate, his exasperated expression giving way to something I couldn’t identify.
Uncharacteristic self-consciousness pricked at my skin. “What?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I like you a lot better when you aren’t talking. I should bring you food more often.”
“Good thing I don’t give two damns whether you like me or not.” My words dripped with honey. “But if you want to buy me food, go ahead. Just know I’ll inspect every inch before it goes into my mouth.”
I realized my mistake before the sentence fully left my mouth.
Shit. That came out dirtier than I’d intended.
Josh’s face split into a devilish grin.
“Don’t.” I held up one hand, my cheeks warming. “Save yourself from whatever juvenile joke you were about to spew.”
To my surprise, he did.
Josh tapped a finger on the pile of papers in front of me. “You know there are other places you could work besides the kitchen.”
“Like where, the bathroom?” LHAC was tiny, and I didn’t want to impose on anyone else’s workspace. “It’s fine. It’s comfortable in here.”
If you overlooked the ice-cold temperature, rickety table, and stiff wooden chairs, that is. Still, it beat working from the toilet seat.
“Yeah, if you compare it to the Siberian wild.”
I released an annoyed sigh. “Are you here to work, or are you here to pester me?”
“I can do both. I’m a great multitasker,” Josh quipped before his eyes turned serious. “Heard we got a new case today.”
“Yep.” I slid the papers toward him, snapping into work mode. “The Bowers. The mother, Laura Bower, fell down the stairs and can’t work for the next two months. No insurance, so they have a crazy amount of medical bills, and she’s the family’s sole breadwinner. Her husband Terence got out of jail a few years ago but hasn’t been able to find work because of his criminal record. They have two kids, Daisy and Tommy, ages six and nine.”
“They’re facing eviction.” Josh scanned the files.
I nodded. “Laura needs a stable place to recover from her fall, to say nothing of the issues that accompany homelessness.”
Murky, unwanted memories crowded my brain at the last word.
Cold nights. Empty stomach. The incessant itch of anxiety crawling over my skin.
My situation had been different from the Bowers, but I remembered all too well what it was like to wake up every morning and wonder if that was the last day I’d have a roof over my head and food on the table.
My mother had been a cocktail waitress, but she’d been more interested in blowing her meager income on shopping than paying the bills. Sometimes, the lights would cut out in the middle of me doing homework because she forgot to pay the electric bill. Eventually, I figured out how to siphon electricity from our neighbor at the ripe old age of ten. Not the most ethical solution, but I did what I had to do.
A shiver rolled
through me.
You’re fine. You’re not that little girl anymore.
“I know her.” Josh rapped his knuckle against the paper with Laura’s picture stapled to it, yanking me back into the present. “I treated her when she came in. Multiple broken bones, heavy bruising, twisted ankle. Still, she was in good spirits and making jokes, trying to keep her kids from panicking.” His face softened. “The ER can be a blur, but I remember her.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “She seems really nice.”
I’d never met Laura, but I could tell she was the type of mother I would’ve killed to have.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to ease the knot of emotion that had taken residence there. “Legally speaking, the obvious solution is to clear Terence’s criminal record so he can find a job,” I said. As the clinic’s practicing attorney, Lisa needed to sign off on everything I did, and she’d agreed clearing his record was the best solution. “He was charged for marijuana possession. One ounce, and he spent a year in jail for it.”
Heat crept over my neck the way it had when I first learned the case details. Few things pissed me off more than the inequity of draconian drug laws. “How stupid is that? Some rapists only get a few months in jail, but have a little marijuana on you and your record is stained forever. That’s such bullshit. You have weed farmers in Colorado raking in the cash from the sale of marijuana while people like Terence are vilified for it. Tell me where the justice is in that. I—what?” I stopped when I noticed Josh staring at me with a tiny, almost fascinated smile.
“I’ve never seen you so worked up over something that wasn’t me.”
“Once again, you’ve proved your self-absorption knows no bounds.” My flush of anger cooled, though my indignation at the injustice of it all remained. “That’s not me breaking the truce,” I added. “That’s a fact.”
“Sure it is,” Josh said dryly. “But you’re right. There is no justice in what happened to Terence.”
I cocked my head, sure I’d heard wrong. “Repeat that. The middle sentence.”
First the apology, then the admission I was right. Was that really Josh sitting across from me, or had aliens abducted him and switched him out with a more agreeable body swap?
“No.”
“Do it.” I nudged his foot with mine, earning myself a scowl. “I want to hear you say it again.”
“Which is exactly why I won’t.”
“Come on.” I gave him my best puppy dog face. “It’s Friday.”
“That has nothing to do with anything.” Josh heaved a long, put-upon sigh when I deepened my puppy eyes. “I said, you’re right.” He sounded so disgruntled I almost laughed. “Only about this one thing, though. Not anything else.”
“See. That wasn’t so hard.” I folded the cupcake wrapper neatly into a square and pushed it to the side for future disposal. “You have a decent smile when you’re not being an ass,” I added generously, since we were being nice.
“Thanks.”
I ignored Josh’s sarcasm and switched back to the case. I wanted to finish all my work before I left so I didn’t have to spend the weekend worrying about it. Our Vermont trip was tomorrow, and while I wasn’t looking forward to two days in a cabin with Josh, I was looking forward to my first vacation of the year.
I didn’t count my trip to Eldorra for Bridget’s coronation. I’d only been there for a weekend, and it’d been so crazy I barely had time to sleep, much less sightsee.
“Now, about the Bowers.” I tapped my pen against the paper. “Lisa mentioned we could provide free medical checkups for Laura while she’s healing.”
“Yes. Usually, we have them come into the free clinic.” Josh waved in the general direction of the exit, and it only occurred to me now that he must’ve been staffing the clinic all day. The pop-up tent was set up outside LHAC, so I wouldn’t have seen him arrive. “But given Laura’s situation, we can make home visits. We just have to fill out the appropriate paperwork…”
For the next hour, Josh and I worked on the Bower case together. He created a checkup schedule and handled the medical paperwork while I finished fact checking the details and gathered the information we needed to clear Terence’s record.
I snuck a glance at Josh while he scribbled something on a blank sheet of paper. His brow etched with a frown of concentration, and I realized it was the first time I’d seen him work.
“Like what you see?” he asked without looking up from his paper.
Heat crawled up my neck again, this time from embarrassment. “Only if the thesaurus changed like to be a synonym for loathe.”
The corner of his mouth curved up a fraction of an inch. “Truce, JR.”
I couldn’t tell whether the soft reminder was mocking or not, but it made my stomach flip. Maybe he had poisoned the cupcake.
I highlighted a passage in the case with more aggression than necessary. Josh and I made a surprisingly good team, but I didn’t fool myself into thinking our truce was a precursor to an actual friendship.
Only a few things in life were certain: death, taxes, and the fact that Josh Chen and I would never be friends.
10
JOSH
The brief camaraderie Jules and I experienced at the clinic fizzled less than twenty-four hours later, when I arrived at the airport’s private jet terminal to find her looking bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and all too smug about beating me to the airport.
“You’re late.” Jules sipped her coffee. No doubt it was a caramel mocha with extra crunch and oat milk because she was lactose intolerant and hated the taste of almond milk.
So predictable.
“We haven’t boarded yet, which means I’m not late.” I dropped into the seat opposite hers and frowned at her outfit. Yoga pants and boots, topped with a fuzzy purple jacket and giant sunglasses she’d propped on top of her head. “Where the hell did you get your jacket? Barneys R Us?”
“I wouldn’t expect someone who showed up to the airport in sweatpants to understand fashion.” Jules’s eyes flicked toward the sweatpants in question, and my irritation melted into smug satisfaction when she lingered a second too long on a certain area.
“Take a picture. It lasts longer,” I drawled.
Her eyes snapped up to mine. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m just thinking about how easy it would be to cut your prized possession off.” She smiled. “Sleep tight this weekend, Joshy. You never know what goes bump in the night.”
I didn’t bother responding to her ridiculous threat, but my eyebrows popped up when she picked up the small white paper bag next to her and tossed it at me without warning.
I caught it easily, my reflexes honed from years of sports.
I opened the bag, and my eyebrows rose higher when I saw the blueberry muffin sitting at the bottom.
“In return for the cupcake.” Maybe the lighting was playing tricks on me, but I thought I spotted the faintest pink tint on Jules’s cheeks. “I don’t like owing people.”
“It was a cupcake, JR, not a loan.” I shook the bag. “Did you poison this?” I asked, mirroring her question from yesterday. “Ava will be upset if her beloved brother drops dead during her birthday trip, which means Alex will be upset, which means you’ll be dead.”
Her sigh contained the weariness of a thousand ages. “Josh, eat the damn muffin.”
I debated for all of two seconds before I shrugged.
What the hell. There were worse ways to go than death by blueberry.
“Thank you,” I said grudgingly.
I ripped off a piece of the pastry and popped it in my mouth while my eyes roved the terminal. “Where’s the happy couple?”
“Probably whispering sweet nothings to each other over breakfast.” Jules tilted her head toward the fancy-looking restaurant further down the terminal.
I snorted at the thought of Alex whispering sweet anythings to anyone, even my sister. “You didn’t join them?”
“Didn’t feel like third wheeling.”
“That�
�s never stopped you before.”
Instead of responding, she eyed me over the rim of her cup, a small notch forming between her brows. “Is it weird for you?” she asked. “Going on a trip with Alex.”
I paused, my jaw tensing for a second before I resumed chewing. “It is what it is. Ava asked, so I’m here. The end,” I said after I finished eating.
A taut silence stretched between us, ripe with unspoken words.
Jules lowered her drink before raising it to her mouth again, like she wanted to shield herself from what she was about to say next. “You’re a good brother.”
No snark, only sincerity, but the words hit me somewhere south of my gut.
“Your sister’s in the hospital…”
“Almost drowned…”
“I’m sorry son, but your mom…she overdosed…”
“He lied to us.” Tears streaked Ava’s cheeks. “He lied to both of us.”
“Join us for the holidays.” I clapped a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Spending Christmas alone is just wrong.”
“I’d feel better if I had someone I trusted looking after her, ya know?”
“You’re the only person I trust, period, outside of my family. And you know how worried I am about Ava…”
Disjointed memories crowded my brain.
Was I a good brother?
I hadn’t been there when Ava almost died, twice. I’d been too blind to see the truth about our father all those years. I’d looked up to the man, did everything I could to make him proud. And I’d all but pushed Ava into Alex’s arms because, once again, I’d trusted someone who ended up betraying me.
In the end, Alex and Ava’s relationship worked out, but I would never forget the months when she walked around like a shell of herself. Quiet, withdrawn, and devoid of the spark that made her her. Every day, I woke up fearing I would find her the way I’d found our mom—with too many pills in her stomach and not enough will to live.
All because I was too goddamned stupid and placed my trust in people I shouldn’t have.