Losing Seven (Falling for Seven Book 2)

by T. A Richards Neville

  She dropped the cigarette to the deck, squished it out with the bottom of her shoe and picked it up to throw on the lawn. “I had wondered if you might bring Julian.”

  I slipped her a harsh squint. “Why? We’re over.”

  The pad of her thumb scraped over the lighter’s wheel, a spear of flame lighting and dying out. She looked into my eyes and turned her mouth down in disfavor. “Shame.”

  Behind Marilyn, with a harpist strumming a sweet, unknown melody, I walked down the petal-strewn aisle, clutching my bouquet with a tremor in my grip. I loosened my fingers around the ribbon tie holding the cut stalks and wiggled them to bring back feeling. As I came to the row where Taj was sitting with Olivia, I glanced to his seat, smiling when he winked at me. He was cute as hell in his cornflower blue linen suit and white grandpa shirt. Olivia waved from beside him and I smiled at her, too. I didn’t extend my gaze farther. Julian wasn’t here, and I hadn’t asked if he’d been invited.

  I took my position in front of the archway, next to Marilyn, and Beau sucked me into his hazel gaze before I turned to face the registrar. He pushed a white handkerchief square into the breast pocket on his black suit. Smoothed out his black textured tie and locked his fingers over his muscular thighs.

  Violins introduced Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, and my breath lodged for a second in my throat when Elena stood at the foot of the aisle on Grandpa Killian’s arm. He was replacing her deceased father, and from the glint in his blue eyes, he couldn’t be prouder.

  Long-sleeved ivory satin pooled on the ground in an overflowing train, a silk chiffon veil covering Elena’s face. The hint of roundness to her stomach plucked at my mouth and I smiled away a tear.

  “Nellie would have loved to see this. Not before she died, I mean before the Alzheimer’s,” Marilyn whispered.

  “She would have,” I whispered back.

  On the other side of the aisle, my dad waited patiently for his fiancé and his baby. I smiled when his eyes strayed to me. And when the registrar declared it time for the groom to kiss his bride, and the guests clapped and shed tears, whistling for the newly-wedded couple, I propped my head on Marilyn’s shoulder in contentment, thankful I’d made it this far.

  The reception followed the wedding breakfast. Early evening, below a bruised sky, candles had been lit and hung in glass cases from tree branches on the estate grounds. An outdoor bar had been stocked and the marquee at the back of the house was alive with music and laughter. Happiness and dancing.

  A comb of blush and ivory roses fastened to Elena’s low bun, her veil stashed in safekeeping for the night, so she was free to dance and enjoy her party. She stood at the bar with my dad, deep in laughter and love. Every once in a while, her hand dipping to rub her swelled stomach.

  Marilyn’s purse banged onto the table I was sitting at, knocking into and shaking the tall Hydrangea centerpiece. I put out my hand to steady the skinny vase, before the tealights caught fire from it falling.

  “There’s a Mercedes on Killian’s drive with a Dolphins sweatshirt lying across the dash.”

  I waited for the point, but there didn’t seem to be one. “So?”

  Marilyn’s eyes were wide with urgency. “Don’t you want to check it out?”

  “For what reason?” I asked.

  “Dolphins apparel, boujee ride. Julian’s here.”

  I looked around the marquee, through the warm haze from the rustic chandeliers. The faces blended into one another. Man, woman, child. Some I recognized, others—from Elena’s side of the family—I’d maybe exchanged an ‘hello’ with or an ‘how are you doing?’ but I didn’t know them beyond a name I’d hours ago forgotten. “No, he isn’t. He wouldn’t be so inconsiderate.”

  Laughter blew from Marilyn’s mouth. “Are we talking about the same Julian?

  “I’m here with Beau.”

  Fake-baked arms folded over Marilyn’s dress and she arched her eyebrows. “I sincerely doubt Julian cares.”

  My eyes were watchful of the people around me, puddling through smart suits and airy dresses. Beau was at the bar talking with my dad, others nearby holding off for the right moment to close in on the famous NHLer. My view was of his back, and that silky flow of hair. He presented himself broader, taller, more handsome and extraordinarily rugged. He shook hands with my dad, patted his back and picked up a tray of drinks. Women looked, whispered, and pretended not to be disappointed he was here with someone. Men were in constant awe, and I’d even caught a few snapping discreet pictures with their phones.

  “No more Julian. Beau’s on his way over here,” I said to Marilyn.

  Her shoulders lifted in partial submission. The rest of her truly believed Julian was in the vicinity.

  Mario and Beau talked hockey, Beau regularly asking me if I was okay, or if I wanted a drink.

  “I’ll get them,” I said. Marilyn was up on the dance floor with my grandpa and sitting comfortably wasn’t working for me since she’d dropped the Julian bomb. “What are you drinking, Mario?”

  He tipped back his glass, looking inside like he’d forgotten what was in there. “Ah, Heineken. Wanna hand?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The tips of Beau’s fingers caressed mine when I stood to leave, wheedling a smile from me as I walked away. Guiding a covert look over my shoulder at Beau and Mario fastened tightly in discussion, I headed straight past the bar and out into the candlelit night. I hadn’t seen Taj for a while now, and I needed to check out this nomad Mercedes for myself and put my mind to rest.

  Dampness soaked the air, the weight of a storm pressing closer with the blackening sky. The lawn felt soft, sagging underneath my satin shoes, and I pulled up the hem of my dress to stop dirt getting on it. It was chillier now, and I quickened my steps, hurrying to the house. White gravel crunched beneath my heels as I followed the curve up to the garages.

  As promised by Marilyn, a black Mercedes Benz had been parked in front of the double garage. Late to the party and segregated from the other cars that had been directed to park off the grounds or to the west of the house, out of view of the wedding procession. I approached the car like you would a minefield: cautiously. Placing each footstep on a premediated patch of stony ground. Rounding the car from the back, I leaned over the hood to look through the reflective glass. Brought my hand to my face, constructing enough shade to see inside.

  I jerked back with a stamping in my chest.

  That’s Julian’s hoodie.

  His sunglasses and hat were on the passenger seat. But I would have seen him at the reception. And definitely at the wedding breakfast. This was Julian Lawson, for crying out loud. Miami Dolphins quarterback and multi-million-dollar phenomenon. There was nowhere for him to hide.

  I rushed back toward the marquee twice as fast as I’d left it. A distant rumble of thunder crashed far out over the Sound and I looked up to the cavernous sky. Yellow dots of light fluttered on my right, whispering for my attention. Candle holders swayed in the gathering gale, and I followed their fiery flicker.

  A manmade pathway wove between the trees, string lights illuminating the way to an arched footbridge that bowed over a rushing stream and algae crusted rocks. I’d been in this forest grotto yesterday hanging the lights and candles, but tonight I got to experience its full enchanting glow.

  The arch of the bridge came into view and my footsteps echoed hollow as I crossed it, the tinkle and swoosh of water below scenting the air with wild grass and brine. On the brink of turning back, stunted by a crack of lightning and explosion of thunder above the white-frosted trees, the train of Elena’s dress drew me forward.

  She leaned in and kissed another man on the cheek, ghosted her fingers across the sharp angle of his jaw and then lowered her head to collect the front of her ivory gown. She faltered on noticing my interruption, cast a troubled look behind her and then rushed by me to the interlude of thunder closing in on Harwich. I turned as she left, deceived by my eyes and positive of what they were capturing.

&nb
sp; On the opposite end of the bridge, perched on the picket fence bordering the footpath, Julian had one brown dress shoe flat to the ground, his other foot balancing on the middle rung of the fence, the gap between his thighs calling for me to fill it. I ignored the temptation, studied his beautifully carved face instead. Not the white shirt or tailored hunter green suit with the jacket open. His hands in the pockets of his slacks added to the strain across his thigh muscles, and he had no right to come here and do this to me. Not today, when I’d held it together so well.

  “I’m here with someone.” I played Beau as my defense, wearing him as body armor.

  My armor splintered with the spear of lightning, a flash of white staining the black sky, heavy with distended clouds of gray mass.

  Julian smirked, then opened his mouth to a guffaw of laughter. “Why am I not surprised? Who’s the man of the hour?”

  “You don’t know him.” He was mocking me, simultaneously towing me into his forcefield.

  The smirk collapsed on his lips, and I knew however much he laughed at me or made fun at my expense, my bringing a date bothered him. Bothered him deeply. For the subsequent string of time in front of him, the upper hand was mine.

  “Try me.”

  White Spruce groaned in the wind, bowing to the boom of thunder. The storm had arrived late, sparing the wedding but not taking pity on us.

  “I’m here with Beau Kessler.”

  Extracting his hand from his pocket, Julian grazed his stubbled skin, thumb and calloused fingers outlining his mouth, skimming his jaw. The gold watch on his wrist was new. A stark, glaring contrast against his olive skin, sitting heavy and domineering like everything else about him. The watch, along with his wrist, disappeared inside the breastbone of his jacket. He pulled out a black hip flask, unscrewed the lid and let the liquid inside slide down his throat like we had all the time in the world. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone, and I guessed he’d already had a few drinks before I got here. Provocatively disheveled and sexy as sin.

  “What do you want, Julian?”

  He stepped down from the fence to offer me the flask, dead on cue with the startling clash of thunder. “Trust you to bring another man.”

  “He’s a friend.”

  The smirk flamed in his dark eyes. “Bullshit. You have no friends.”

  Baiting me, as usual. Same as in college, back when his childish moves would have irritated me.

  I took the flask, put the ringed neck to my mouth and swallowed. Not content with just one drink, I inhaled until I could hold no more, and my insides were overheating. “How do you know I’m not sleeping with him?” I bravely—or stupidly—pushed.

  Julian weighed the contingency. Five seconds later, he’d made up his mind. “Because your body belongs to me, and you don’t fuck out of spite. Did you think about sleeping with him?”

  I capped the lid and passed the flask back to him. “Not sleeping with him…” I heard the rain before I felt it. A spattering between the trees like dripping wax—a perpetual patter on the pebbled ground. My name lifted with the drenched breeze, Julian’s navy-blue eyes calling for more than just my attention and presence.

  “It wasn’t what you did, Angel. It was you taking what I didn’t have time to realize I wanted. And that’s no excuse for my actions. I should have been there for you no matter what.” His hand sheathed mine over the flask. “Your dad told me. Why didn’t you?”

  “And blame it on him?” I shook my head, averted my gaze. “Too convenient. Would it have really changed your mind about me?”

  “Babe, this past year’s been a shit show.”

  My heart galloped all the way to my ears, colliding with another blast of thunder and rain cascading in horizontal sheets. My dress was ruined, my hair drenched. Destroyed curls plastered to my face, dripping into my cleavage in a runaway river.

  “I made a mistake once letting you go. I don’t plan on making a second one.”

  “What about the bet in college?” I challenged.

  “That wasn’t a mistake. I was intentionally being an asshole.”

  I laughed into the rain, the misty downpour trickling through my eyelashes and over my lips. “How is it we always get caught in a storm?”

  Audacious confidence announced itself in Julian’s carnal grin. “A gift from God? To wash away our sins and start over?”

  “You don’t believe in God.”

  Steadily, Julian lured me in, fist enclosing tighter around my fingers. Arrested in his containment, the aromatics of his woody and citrus cologne fusing with the earthy, sweet scent of rain. “I believe in us.”

  “Julian, I’m not the same person.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  To no one’s surprise, I was in his arms, soaked to the bone and plastered to the front of his dress shirt. The landscape of his chest and concrete stomach an old familiarity against my curves. A seismic reconnection so rare it didn’t exist with me and anyone else. This feeling—as agonizing as it was—couldn’t be reproduced or manufactured.

  “Don’t make your decision yet. Just remember I’m an idiot without you. I didn’t fight this battle with you, but I refuse to lose you this way.”

  “But what I did to you… to us… I can’t stop myself from looking at it as cowardly.”

  “You want to talk about cowardly? You’re looking at it. What’s cowardly about making a choice based on my wellbeing, my career? You put me first, Angel. If I’d have been any kind of equal to you, I would have seen that, and I’d have put you first.”

  Julian’s arms sheltered my back, his hand outspread on the skin over my spine. Our breaths expelled in clouds of steam now, a result from the clash of temperatures as the precipitation around us dropped in degrees from the blustering storm.

  “I should have known you didn’t rush into the abortion. Should’ve known you were talked into it. And I hope you can forgive me for allowing that to happen to you. You’ve got your own future, and you’re going to graduate. It’s time to stop blaming yourself, you did nothing wrong. If anyone should feel guilty, it’s me. You were mine and I didn’t protect you.”

  Julian’s continued proclaimed acceptance of my pregnancy twisted the knife in deeper. Right up to the hilt. The ghost of possibility might haunt me until I died. “He didn’t talk me into it, I already had my own doubts and insecurities. My dad’s only guilty of finalizing them.”

  “And pushing you over the edge. All because I’d made you feel inferior to my career, and I’m sorry for that, because that truly wasn’t the case.”

  A burst of lightning suspended Julian in a flash-freeze moment, the anguish on his face and the regret in his eyes a mirror to my very own soul. We’d weaved our threads of pain and hurt each other splendidly for the finished design.

  “You’re still mine, Angel,” he said in a warning tone. A rumble of thunder followed, and the rain poured harder, wilder. Beating my shoulders in a rush to deepen the puddles at our feet. I didn’t dare look down at my jeweled, satin heels. How could I return to the wedding reception looking like this? Bedraggled and muddy. Julian’s suit had darkened in color, a slight flop to the front of his hair where the gel has loosened its hold. I pushed my fingers through it, combed it back and hauled myself up to feel his lips at the same time—cold and wet. My stomach clenched. Rain leaked between the seam of our joined mouths, and I closed my eyes to the sting of water mixing with the residue of my makeup.

  Someone was calling my name, the echoing timbre riding on the rain and wind. I didn’t listen to it or call back. I let Julian hold me tighter, press me to his body and turn me around while glued to his mouth. His feet carrying us between the canopy of Spruce when the voice shouted louder, nearer. We were cocooned in damp darkness when the heavy thud of footsteps sprinted over the footbridge, Julian’s ravenous hands lifting my dress as his mouth devoured mine. Rain lashing the ground disguised my coarse panting. Julian’s groan into my mouth as he kneaded and explored skin long untouched lighting an ele
ctrical fire within me not even this rain could extinguish.

  There was absolutely no doubt. My dress was ruined. And more worryingly, so was I.

  At the bay window, with my bare feet kicked up on the sill, I sat in the wicker chair with a patchwork blanket pulled up to my chin, watching a continuation of the spring storm crash against the panes of glass and sweep down the side of the house. The chill from last night stuck to my bones and I pulled the blanket higher, balling it in my fists.

  The sky was charcoal, loaded with more bad weather.

  “You should go back,” I said to Julian. He lay in the bed he’d shared with me the night before, arms folded behind his head and the quilt to his waist. He was naked underneath, both sets of our clothes drying on the heaters. Despite the dreary darkness, it was still early, and I hadn’t heard any movement in the rest of the house, or voices

  “Go back where, Angel? Where should I go while you’re still here?”

  I wanted to go with him, I really did. But for how long would history repeat itself? How many times was I willing to relive the pain he could inflict just to feel his dazzling ecstasy?

  “What did my dad tell you?” I asked.

  “Everything. How scared you were, and the shit advice he threw at you alongside his money.” Julian shifted in the sheets, sitting up and lowering one toned leg over the side of the divan. “How brave you were to see it through by yourself, then pick yourself up and carry on.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” I said. “I want you to know that.”

  “I didn’t think it was a fucking cakewalk, Angel. It tore me up knowing you did it alone. I couldn’t stand having that constantly on my mind. The guilt ate at me until I had nothing left to feed it. So don’t sit there and ask me to leave. Don’t push me out of your life. You tried it when Nellie died, and I tried to understand. Even let you get away with it for a minute.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The healing process from Jordan’s treatment of me had allowed doubts about Julian to occasionally slip in over time. I’d been building a shield around myself for protection from the wrong person. Going through with the abortion was another form of pushing Julian away. Excluding him from my life indirectly and dishonestly.