“I don’t think Lee knew your identity, Jules. We did a closed adoption due to the circumstances surrounding your abuse. Your name was changed, and the records sealed for your privacy. I think the two of you stumbled upon each other by the fate of God. I know how much he meant to you when you were a child. I would hate to see you risk what you have with him now over something that occurred seventeen years ago.”
I try to push away the sudden ache in my chest. “I…” I bite my lip ring, struggling to find the right words. “I understand why he did what he did. I truly do. He did it to protect me. It doesn’t take away the feeling of betrayal. I can’t explain it, but that’s how I feel. I know it doesn’t make sense to feel this way.”
“I don’t know why you feel betrayed. In your heart, did you recognize Lee when you met him?”
I shake my head.
“Then why would you expect him to recognize you? You were ten years old when you were taken from his life. He was as much a child as you were, Juliette. How can you hold that against him?”
My chest tightens. Everything he’s saying is true. My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Pops continues, speaking through a sad smile. “Do you think because he knows what you went through as a child, he’ll pity you? Do you think you’re not enough because of your childhood? You have struggled with thinking you were not enough. Maureen and I have always said you’re perfect the way you are. You have the power to live your dreams, Juliette. Go after the things you truly want most. You have the power to let go of the things that weigh you down.”
Tears roll down my cheeks, and I swat them away quickly. I haven’t cried in years, and since yesterday morning, that’s all I seem to do. My black, hardened heart seems to have thawed and is no longer numb. Instead, the pain is unbearable.
Pops’ Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows hard. “I’m going to say this once, and I want you to listen very closely. Do you understand me?”
He holds my stare with love in his eyes. “Everything you desire is within your reach. Novocain is thriving. You are doing what you are truly meant to do, helping others. It’s time you choose yourself, sweetheart. It’s time for you to open your heart to the possibility of love. You have the power to rewrite your story. You can rewrite your ending.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Juliette
The door slams behind me. Quinn tosses her keys into the bowl on the table and makes her way over to the kitchen, where I’ve been sitting on the window seat, staring out for the past hour.
I choose to ignore her. My exhaustion has made me short-tempered. Add in the strain of listening to Quinn and my parents, and I’m at my breaking point. Quinn has been on my case about Brennan. Don’t get me wrong, I love my best friend, but sometimes I’d love to take a piece of duct tape and slap it across her big fat mouth.
Quinn isn’t saying anything I haven’t thought of myself.
Why are you being a bitch?
Why are you ignoring his calls?
You are ruining an amazing thing between the two of you. A friendship…a relationship.
I haven’t been sleeping. I’ve been avoiding my parents. I’ve been snappy with the staff at the shop. I’ve avoided anything to do with Uniquely Inked.
Pushing people away is what I’m great at. But will I regret pushing the one person away who was there for me when I needed someone the most? One who loved me when no one else did?
Quinn reaches across me, snatching my phone from my hands. “You have some missed calls. Still being a giant asshole, I see.”
I grab the phone from her. “Shut up,” I hiss. Then I add, “Please,” to attempt politeness. Avoiding eye contact with her, I turn back toward the window.
She walks over and stands at my feet. “You better hope he likes you enough to tolerate your shit. Most men wouldn’t. I understand your concerns. I get that you have doubt if he truly knew who you were before that night.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “But I think you’re wrong here. I don’t think he did. I wish you’d hear him out. Talk to him. Because if you continue down this path, you’re ruining something that may have been really great between you two.”
She turns without another word, heading toward her room. The sound of her door closing is deafening.
Two weeks have passed since I walked out of Brennan’s apartment. He’s texted and called multiple times, and I haven’t responded. I need to get my head on straight to see if I can move past this.
I’ve racked my brain, forcing myself to think of all the moments we spent together. Were there any signs I should have seen?
How didn’t I notice the tattoo on his inner arm? I’m just as guilty as he is for not noticing mine.
He was right. I never truly let him in. Yes, he’s broken a few of my rules; however, I never shared much of my past. I spoke a few times of my childhood, but never about the time I spent in the first foster home with Peg and Don.
Every day, I wake with pain in the pit of my stomach. My heart aches for him. I’m desperate to be held by him, to be touched by him, to be near him.
The thought of Brennan moving on kills me. Has he been back to Murphy’s? Has he taken another woman home? Has he slept with anyone else? These are the crazy thoughts that keep me awake at night.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Brennan
Two weeks have passed since Jules stormed out of my apartment. I’ve thrown myself into my work, spending countless hours at the shop under Charles’ watchful eye.
At first, I gave her time and space. But my patience is running thin. After multiple calls and text messages, I decide to pay her a visit at Novocain. I’ve respected her wishes and not brought our relationship to the shop, but she’s given me no other option.
As I push through the door, I see a tall brunette perched on the chair at the front desk as “Headstrong” by Trapt plays loudly throughout the place.
“Can I help you?” she purrs as she pushes her chest out.
“I’d like to speak to the owner,” I say politely. I refuse to call her Mills. The name burns my tongue as if acid was poured on it. Yet I don’t want to call her Jules in front of her employees, knowing she doesn’t go by her true name in either shop.
She raises an eyebrow. “You mean Mills?”
Truth be told, even hearing the name Mills burns like hell. Thinking back, I don’t know how I didn’t put the pieces together sooner.
Her eyes. Her eyes always spoke to me. It was one of the first things I noticed about her when we met on her lawn all those years ago.
Certain facial expressions she made were identical to Jules. Even small things, I should have noticed. Jules always pulled on her bottom lip when she was nervous as a child, only now she bites her lip ring.
I nod.
“Ah, sure. Give me a minute to find her,” she says and walks off. She looks over her shoulder and says something to a guy leaning over a client. When he looks up, recognition hits me. It’s one of the guys who attempted to give me shit at Murphy’s the night I met Jules. I’ll be damned. The fucker works for her.
After a few minutes, Juliette emerges from the back, pulling off her black latex gloves, then tosses them in the trash can behind the desk.
“What are you doing here?” She clamps her jaw tight and stares.
“We need to talk.” I lift a dark eyebrow.
“No, we don’t. I’ve said everything I needed to say.”
A muscle ticks angrily in my jaw. I take a deep breath. “Well, I have a shit ton to say,” I hiss.
“You can’t come here. We’ve discussed this already. I don’t bring drama into my shop.” She looks at me with a sardonic expression, which sends my temper soaring.
“If you’d answer the damn phone, there’d be no need for me to come here,” I say with anger burning in my glare.
Her lips twist into a cynical smile. “If I wanted to talk, I would have.” She points to the door. “Please leave. You’re making a scene.” She throws the words at m
e like they are stones.
I shove both hands through my hair. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Leave,” she growls. “I won’t ask you again.”
This is bullshit. I refuse to let her continue to push me away. It’s time I push back. She’s going to have to do better than this to force me out of her life.
“You’re the saddest person I know.” I look Jules in the eyes as I deliver the hurtful statement. We have something great, and she’s choosing to destroy it.
Her entire body tenses. “Really? That’s what you think of me?” Her throat works to swallow.
I’m standing before her, laying it all out, yet she stands before me like a stone statue. She’s re-built the wall around her heart. The one I was breaking down brick by brick. Pain sits beneath her eyes. Nothing between us is the same. She’s becoming a stranger.
I want to scream, ‘I love you. Why are you doing this?’ I know saying hurtful things isn’t how I should handle this, but I want to hurt her like she hurt me by walking away. I want her to feel how horrible I feel. How miserable I’ve been with her not in my life…again.
I smile sadly. “You’re damn right.” I can’t stand to see her so broken, because that’s exactly what she is. Rather than admit she has feelings for me, she’d prefer to walk away. Go back to her fucking rules. Nights of one-night stands. Never getting attached. Refusing to invest in a real relationship.
Her eyes snap closed and she inhales deeply, then raises her arm and points to the door. “Get the hell out.”
“Is he giving you shit? Do I need to toss his ass out?” The bald guy from Murphy’s approaches where we stand, addressing Jules.
She glares at me. “It’s fine. No need to worry. He was just leaving.”
“No. We’re doing this right here, right now.” I reach forward, grabbing her arm, attempting to lead her toward her office in the back of the shop when she yanks away from me. “Don’t touch me,” she hisses.
She storms toward the office, slamming the door behind us when we enter.
Jules turns to face me, but I lift her out of the way, and turn and set her away from the door.
She knows I won’t hurt her, but we need to hash it out, right here, right now. Once the door is locked, I know she isn’t going to escape. We’re going to battle, and this is a war I plan to win.
“Who the hell do you think you are? Get the fuck out of my shop!” she yells.
I lean against the door and cross my arms over my chest. “Not until you pull the stick out of your ass and talk to me. You’ve avoided my calls for two weeks. That stops today.”
“Who do you think you are?” she sneers.
“I’m Brennan, the kid who loved you when no one else did,” I growl at her. Pushing off the door, I walk toward her. With each step I take to close the distance between us, she retreats one step back until she’s flush against the wall and has nowhere else to go. Leaning forward, I place both hands against the wall, caging her in.
I trap her against the wall. Trapped equals fight or flight. I know my Jules. She will fight. She will give me what I want. I know just how far to push her before she emotionally shuts down.
“I was there for you through the roughest five years of your life. I understand you were angry at me for telling your secret. But I didn’t have a choice,” I emphasize.
Her gray eyes bore into me. Her expression is thunderous.
“I wasn’t going to sit back and watch those fuckers kill you!” My voice rises, filled with anger.
Her face pales with despondency, and she looks away.
“I did what I needed to do to protect you. Hate me all you want. But stop and think; you wouldn’t be where you are today if I’d kept quiet. Who knows what would have happened to you. Who knows if you would have even left their house alive.”
Jules’ head snaps up, her dark brows furrow above her stormy eyes. “But—"
I feel a tug in my chest as I stare into her eyes. I cut her off sharply by placing my fingertip gently over her lips. She needs to know how I feel. I have to put it all on the line. “Our paths crossed again seventeen years later. I refuse to think it was by chance. It was fate, Jules. Please don’t push me away. What we have is amazing. I love spending time with you. Why do you insist on letting one thing I did as a child, something I did to protect you, keep us apart now?”
Her gaze never breaks mine, her gray eyes shining with emotion. “It’s not what you did. I understand why you did it. I already told you. The ten-year-old Jules hated you. The twenty-seven-year-old Jules totally gets it. You were protecting me like you always had.”
She lifts her hand, placing it on my chest, over my heart. “What hurts the most is, I truly believe you may have known I was your Jules before the night in your bedroom. I never pegged you to be a liar, Brennan.”
“I’m not. If I’d known you were Juliette, I would have said something immediately. I could have never kept that from you. What kind of man do you think I am? We were sleeping together for fuck’s sake.”
Does she really think I would betray her in such a manner?
My hand cups her chin as I search her upturned face. “That would have been some dick move to keep something of such significance from you.”
“We’re broken pieces that will never fit back together again,” she whispers softly.
I lean forward until our faces are treacherously close. “Don’t say that.”
My mind tells me to move, give her some space, yet my body is screaming at me to lean into her until we touch. I want to touch her face, her lips. Every part of my body tingles being this close to her.
With each pounding thump in my chest, I realize how much I need her…how much I love her. “I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you, Jules.”
“It’s not that simple. Things are complicated now,” her voice tapers off and her eyes are filled with such sadness.
“You’re making it complicated. Yes, we have a past. We found our way back together. Why stop what we have going?”
She presses her lips together and waits quietly. With one finger, I tip her chin up to meet my stare.
“Let it be, please.” My voice trembles.
“I want to, but I don’t know if I can,” she says in a voice that seems to come from a long way off.
The look on her face pulls at my heartstrings. “Follow your soul, Jules. It knows its way. It will find its way to me. Just as mine has to you. Life doesn’t give us second chances. If God has given me one, I’m not going to waste it.”
She closes her eyes and summons a deep breath, holding it in. When Jules opens her gray eyes, they bore into mine. “You’ve always been good with words.” She swallows back a smile.
Every time her gaze meets mine, my heartbeat races in response. Every day, my love deepens and intensifies. “I want to kiss you.”
“You can’t.” Her refusal is a feeble attempt, at best.
“Oh, I can.” My lips curve into a dangerous smile as my eyes fall from her mouth to her breasts, then back up to meet hers. I lean in, placing a soft kiss on her lips. “And I will.”
Without waiting for a response, I deepen the kiss, and Juliette doesn’t resist.
I lean lazily against the edge of the desk, crossing my arms. “If you’re looking for an apology, you’ll be waiting forever. I won’t apologize for kissing you. Not when I’ve been able to do it for quite some time now.”
Jules swallows hard, lifting her fingers to touch her swollen lips.
“I didn’t come here to argue with you. I came to try and tell you I’ve never lied to you. I promise.”
My gaze travels over her face and searches her eyes. “Please tell me you believe me. I need to know you trust me.”
“Trust goes both ways, Brennan.”
I suck in a deep breath. “I know. I’ve only betrayed your trust once, and I explained my reasons.”
“Trust is a huge issue for me. I understand you were in an impossible position when you were a chi
ld. One I wish I never put you in. I will forever be grateful for our friendship. When I realized who you were, I felt as if my world was falling apart.”
“I—” Juliette holds her hand up, cutting me off.
“However, I am willing to continue with what we have as adults. I’m attracted to you, I love spending time with you, and I believe you didn’t know my identity.” She lifts her hand, pointing her finger at me. “Do not ever lie to me. Lies are a deal breaker for me. Are we on the same page?”
I close the distance between us and scoop her in my arms. “Maybe your world wasn’t falling apart, rather it was falling into place.”
Jules draws my face to hers in a renewed embrace.
“I love the scruff. It fits you.” Her eyes never waver from mine as her fingertips feather over my newly grown facial hair.
“What can I say? It’s been a rough two weeks.” My lips slowly descend to meet hers. The touch of her lips sends a shock wave through my entire body. Forcing her lips open with my thrusting tongue, the kiss is punishing and all-consuming. She gives herself freely to the passion of the kiss.
I’m shocked at her own eager response to the touch of my lips. God, I’ve missed her. I missed having her wrapped tightly in my arms, the smell of her skin, the way she responds to my touch.
Jules has ruined me for all others.
There won’t be others. Never.
She’s mine for life.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Juliette
Brennan’s arms are wrapped around my naked body as we cuddle in bed. “Jules, you’re perfect the way you are.”
My eyes focus on the picture of Brennan and me on the nightstand. His mom had taken it on my seventh birthday. I’m holding my sketchpad, grinning proudly. How did I never notice it before? I’ve been in his bedroom countless times. How could I be so oblivious?
“Perfection isn’t a real word. Some asshole made it up to make himself feel better about himself. A way to boost his own ego. I let go of the idea of perfection a long time ago. I’m not perfect, I’m real. I have flaws.”
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