Since He Really Feels (He Feels)

by Lisa Suzanne

  Thank God.

  I felt all of the fear leave my body, and then I kissed her behind her ear. She turned in my arms to look up at me, and I saw tears brimming in her eyes. My eyes were drawn to her beautiful lips, and I leaned down toward them. My lips hovered over hers. “I’m done, too, baby. You and me until the end.”

  “Until the end,” she echoed, and then my lips whispered across hers. She pulled my head down to plant her mouth more firmly against mine, and then I felt her tongue sweep through my mouth.

  God, I loved this woman. Nothing would ever change that.

  She pulled back first. “What did you want to talk about?” she asked.

  She was facing me, her head resting on my bicep as she cuddled into my chest. I pressed my lips to her forehead.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” I started. She leaned back and looked up at me, alarm written in her eyes.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Don’t be scared,” I said, pulling her back into the comfortable place she’d been resting in only seconds before. “There’s just been a lot happening, and I don’t want to keep things from you anymore.”

  “Why the change of heart?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered, and then I sighed. “I just don’t want secrets between us.”

  “Is this because of Bree?” she asked, her voice quiet.

  Was it? That was a great question. Maybe it was. Maybe if I’d let Julianne in on everything from the start, she’d have been there at the office with me that night and Bree never would’ve kissed me. Or maybe not.

  I shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  She was quiet.

  “What do you want to hear first?” I asked.

  “What are my options?”

  “My mother or BKG.”

  “Whatever you want to tell me,” she whispered.

  “I’ll start with my mother, then,” I said. I took a deep breath and realized that it was a shaky, shuddering breath. I didn’t fully understand why this was so hard for me to talk about, but it was.

  “You know a lot about her already,” I started. “But what you don’t know is what she did that was completely unforgivable.”

  I paused, figuring out how exactly to frame what I was about to say. And then I just blurted it out. “When I was very young, shortly after my brother was born, my mother had an affair.”

  Julianne’s hand came up to my face, and she absently stroked my cheek. “Oh, Nick. I’m so sorry.”

  I turned on my back. It was too hard to tell this story while someone was staring at me, so I looked up at the ceiling before I continued talking. Her head rested on my shoulder, and my arm wrapped around her. She absently touched my chest, drawing circles with her fingers while I spoke. “The details are fuzzy. I was only four at the time, and I honestly don’t remember. I just remember spending a lot of time with my father. I didn’t find out about any of this until about ten years ago.”

  “Why ten years ago?”

  “The affair produced a child. My half sister showed up on my doorstep on her eighteenth birthday.”

  “What?” she asked, shock evident in her voice.

  “I’d been shocked, too, when I met her. Apparently my mother had lived two lives my entire life, and everything felt like a total lie.”

  “Where’s your sister now?”

  “One, I don’t consider her my sister. And two, I have no idea.”

  I felt her gazing up at me, her eyes burning me, but I refused to look away from my spot on the ceiling. I didn’t want someone to try to convince me to give family a chance. Maybe that’s what made this so difficult to talk about. I didn’t want anything to do with my half sister. As far as I was concerned, she didn’t exist. Josh was my only sibling, and he felt the same way.

  “Aren’t you curious?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not. My mother slept with another man behind my dad’s back. She got pregnant with another man’s child, had the baby, and managed to keep two completely separate families when we were children. And then my dad died, and my mom wasn’t there for us. Maybe we reminded her of our dad too much. But to me, that was total bullshit. She’d cheated on him and had a kid with another man while he was still alive.”

  I’d never told anybody that story, and oddly, the crushing weight of the family drama I’d carried with me since the day Alexa had shown up on my doorstep seemed a little lighter.

  “What happened when you met your sister?” she asked, her finger smoothing over my eyebrow in a repeated motion. I wasn’t sure if it was to get me to turn to look at her or if she just felt the need to touch me, but it was somehow comforting. I continued staring up at the ceiling, not sure what sort of emotional dam would break if I had to look someone in the eyes while I shared the rest of my story.

  “She tracked me down and knocked on my door one day. She told me she was my sister. For some reason, my mother had told her about Josh and me, but she hadn’t told Josh and me about Alexa. So she introduced herself, told me how close she was with dear old Mom, and told me she wanted to build a relationship with me. I was still young. I figured anybody who came into my life unexpectedly came in because they wanted something from me. In this case, I figured she, like my mother, was after my trust fund.”

  “So you blew her off?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Completely. But she didn’t give up. It wasn’t until I confronted my mother with the information that she finally stopped.”

  “What did your mom say?”

  “She tried to deny it at first, but eventually she broke down and told me.”

  Her fingers stopped playing with my eyebrow and came to a rest on my chest, right over my heart. “So then what happened? Did you ever give your sister a chance?”

  “I don’t consider her my sister.”

  She sighed. “You should.”

  This was why I hadn’t wanted to tell anybody. I didn’t need someone else’s opinion on how to run my life, especially when it came to my family drama. But Julianne came first in my life now, and I needed to make sure that she knew that. If she had a good reason why she felt that way, I had to at least hear her out, even if I didn’t agree with what she had to say. “Why?”

  “Because it’s not her fault that your mom made a mistake. I don’t know what I’d do without my sister, Nick.” Her voice was quiet and trembled a little at the end of her sentence.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without Josh, either. And that’s enough for me.”

  She was quiet for a few moments, taking in what I’d said. And then she asked a question that I hadn’t expected. “Would it be okay if I met her?”

  I finally broke my staring contest with the ceiling. I sat up and leaned against the headboard, my arms no longer around Julianne. She sat up and faced me.

  “Why?” I finally asked.

  “Because she’s going to be my family, too. She’s going to be my half sister-in-law.”

  “‘In-law’ the operative phrase. She’s only my half sister because of my mother’s mistake, and the three times I’ve seen Alexa, all I could think about was how my mother betrayed my father.”

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of sad that you look at one of your siblings as a mistake? How would you feel if it was reversed? If you wanted to build a relationship with your sister but she just brushed you off?”

  I shrugged. I never did think that it was sad, but maybe she had a point. I’d spent the last ten years punishing Alexa for something that wasn’t her fault, and I never even gave her a chance. Josh had tried to convince me at one point that we should get to know her, but I was firm in my resolve, and I made sure Josh had seen things my way. Maybe that stubborn streak in me was doing more damage than I thought.

  “Just think about it. For me.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, because I would do anything for Julianne, which I was about to prove when I made my next big confession.

  “That’s all I’m asking.”r />
  “Ready for information overload part two?” I asked, needing to change the subject from my family.

  “BKG?”

  I nodded.

  “What’s going on? Is this about why you’ve been working so late?”

  “Sort of.” I stood up and pulled her up with me. We stood naked together as she wrapped her arms around me. I motioned to the overnight bags I had dropped off earlier. “Let’s put on some clothes and sit outside and enjoy the night.”

  She groaned. “Do we have to stop being naked?” she asked as her hands palmed against my shoulder blades and she buried her face in my chest.

  “Not if you don’t want to,” I whispered, but somehow telling my fiancée that we were both about to lose our jobs seemed like news that should be delivered while we were wearing clothes. I traced the path of her spine and she shuddered beneath me.

  CHAPTER 27

  JULIANNE BECKER

  Naked Nick was definitely a beautiful thing to behold.

  I loved that he was finally opening up. Telling me about his family secrets while there was nothing between us, not even the barrier of clothes, made the confession even more intimate and sincere.

  So I didn’t want to put clothes back on; I didn’t want anything between us. I wanted him to cradle me in his arms while he told me everything that he’d been holding back. But the look in his eyes set my nerves on edge. He was about to confess something serious about the company we both worked for, and that was scaring the hell out of me.

  I broke from our embrace and found sweats in my overnight bag. We went out onto our balcony together, and we stared out into the darkness lit only by the pale moonlight. We each took a seat on a patio chair, and Nick scooted closer to me and linked his fingers through mine. It was strange to have this conversation in the dark, in a place where I couldn’t look into his eyes to see what he was thinking or feeling as he spoke, and that was the thought that stuck with me and sent a ripple of fear through me that ultimately clutched icily at my heart.

  We sat in silence for a moment, and then I heard him take in a deep breath. He exhaled slowly, and then he spoke.

  “BKG is filing bankruptcy next week.”

  His voice was calm, and my reaction was anything but.

  “What?” I screeched into the quiet, dark night.

  His hand tightened on mine. “BKG is going under. I’ve been hearing rumors for the past two weeks, but I didn’t want to scare you. I confronted Brennan about it, and he confirmed that the company is struggling.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “Basically they’re doing it so that another company can’t come in and buy off the parts. It’s protection more than anything else.”

  “Are our jobs safe?” For about the millionth time, I wished I’d never left McMillan.

  “I don’t know for sure, but it’s not looking good.”

  He dragged me from McMillan with promises of a great new job that I actually kind of hated, and now he didn’t even know if I was still going to have a job? I knew it was irrational to blame him, but I fully blamed him anyway. “What the fuck, Nick?”

  He let go of my hand and leaned forward with his elbow on his knees, clasping his hands together in front of him.

  “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t know what else to say.”

  We were both going to lose our jobs. On the one hand, I knew he had his trust fund. We’d be okay financially, at least for awhile. But what about the fact that I would be jobless?

  Even in my anger, I could tell that there was more. He was holding something else back from me, and I wanted to know what it was. I needed to know. “What else are you hiding?” I asked.

  He glanced over at me, and I couldn’t help but notice how handsome he looked. It was really just his silhouette in the night, but somehow even when I was fearful that I was losing my job, just seeing him sitting next to me made everything okay.

  “I got an offer to start up my own company. I’ve been trying to figure out what the smartest decision would be, and I finally realized that I can’t make that decision alone. I need you, Julianne. I need you to help me figure out what to do.”

  Despite the catastrophic news he’d just delivered, he needed me as much as I needed him. Even though he’d waited, he had still come to me.

  “How do you get an offer to start your own company? Isn’t that something you just do?” I asked.

  “Do you remember that meeting I went to on Wednesday?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, nodding.

  “The man I met with told me that he wants me to rebrand his company. It’s a big company with a lot of different divisions, and he wants me to eventually take over his marketing if everything goes well with the rebranding. He said my ideas are fresh and he wants me personally, but he doesn’t want BKG involved. He wants to hire me as a private consultant.”

  “Holy shit, Nick! That’s huge!” I knew he dreamed of owning his own company someday. I knew how thrilled he had to be at this news. And in my excitement, a selfish thought reared its ugly head: Why hadn’t he told me this sooner?

  He nodded. “I know. It’s a fucking whale, Julianne. It would easily launch my own company.”

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “Before the news about BKG going under was confirmed, BKG was sort of stopping me. I just started there; I just brought you over. I can’t just leave. But the bankruptcy thing clears up that obstacle.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “There’s a little more to it. For one, I want to bring you with me.”

  “I’m in, Nick. Say no more. I would love to continue working with you.”

  “I want to start this company together. Co-owners. Partners in life forever, both in marriage and in business.”

  “I would love that,” I said.

  “This whole idea was contingent on you anyway,” he added.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the person who spoke with me said he wants you and me to work together on the rebranding.”

  “Who asked for me?”

  He paused, and I could tell he was thinking about whether or not to tell me. And, finally, he did. “Jack Miller.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. Jack Miller had personally requested me? Travis’s dad had been like a second father to me since I was a child, but I also knew that he was aware of what I had done to his son. I’d broken his heart, and that wasn’t okay. So I had to wonder why he was doing this and why he wanted to help Nick and me.

  “Why would Jack Miller want me?” I asked.

  “He said you know the company well.”

  “So it’s the Millers. Is that why it’s been hard for you to make a decision?” I deduced.

  He shook his head. “There’s more to it.”

  What the hell else could there be?

  “I know your families are close, but you have to promise me that this stays between us,” he said, his voice suddenly serious.

  I leaned over and took his hand in mine. “I promise.”

  He squeezed my hand and then leaned back in his chair. He took a deep breath. “Jack said you know the company well, but you also know the man who Jack will be promoting to his position when he retires before the end of the year.”

  “Travis,” I whispered, gazing out into the darkness.

  “Hence my dilemma. Take the chance of a lifetime to start my own company with guaranteed success, but throw my fiancée directly at her temptation? Or stick it out with BKG and hope for the best? I just don’t fucking know what to do, Julianne, and I need you to help me make that decision.”

  A million thoughts ran through my head, but the one thought that stuck was Nick calling Travis my “temptation.” Perhaps he had been that for me at one point, but Nick had to know that Travis no longer was a threat to us. I was still completely at a loss as to how to get him to understand that, though.

  We didn’t solve any of the world’s problems that night. In fact, we went to bed. I was exhaust
ed after my night at the bar followed by hot sex with Nick, and I didn’t know what to tell him. So I chickened out. “Can I sleep on it?” I had asked, knowing it was the coward’s way out but not knowing how else to respond.

  I could tell he was disappointed that I had cut off our conversation at the pass, but I didn’t know what to do. He was absolutely right; this was going to be a tough decision. I was a professional and I loved the idea of starting a business with Nick, but throwing Travis and me together after everything that had happened just didn’t seem like the best idea, particularly in the spirit of me taking into account others’ feelings.

  My heart told me that was why Jack had done it. First and foremost, he was a great father, and he wanted his children to be happy. He knew that Travis needed my friendship just as much as I needed his, and maybe Jack knew something that we couldn’t see because we were too close to the situation and we couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Now that Travis was happy with Lindsay and I was engaged to marry another man, maybe Jack had the right idea in allowing us to sort out our personal lives by forcing us together in our business lives. Something deep inside was thrilled at the chance to work with Travis. We’d never crossed paths in our careers, but I knew that he was excellent at what he did. I loved the Miller family, and the chance to work closely with the business that Jack had built was an exciting prospect. But I had Nick to consider.

  I was filled with questions. Would Nick be able to handle seeing Travis and me together on a daily basis? Or would he live in a constant state of suspicion and jealousy? Did Travis even know this was happening?

  And how did Lindsay figure into all of it?

  I had done a good job avoiding thinking about her and her feelings. But if she and Travis were serious, would she be able to handle Travis working alongside me?

  I slept on it, but I didn’t have any answers the next morning. If anything, more questions had formed in my head overnight.