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Tori makes a soft noise then wraps her arms around Jules.
‘And he didn’t change his mind. He—’ Jules laughs thickly, an itch appearing at the back of her eyes. She grabs onto Tori’s arm. ‘He told me he was using me for sex. That it was only ever about sex for him. That really hurt to hear.’
‘Of course it did.’ Cat removes the plate of cookies before they slide off Jules’s lap.
‘But then later I realised—How hypocritical is that?’ Jules’s chest flushes hot.
‘Are you sure I can’t bad-mouth him?’ Tori props her chin on Jules’s shoulder. ‘What a load of inconsistent bullshit.’
‘Well, that’s the thing. Realising that contradiction makes me believe even more that he didn’t mean it. I knew he was only trying to justify all that stuff to himself, like Matteo warned me he does. And I can’t believe it was only sex for him. I won’t let him change what being with him meant to me.’
‘And he won’t.’ Cat drops a hand on Jules’s knee. ‘Your memories and your feelings are your own.’
Jules focuses on taking measured breaths, willing the clogged throat and itchy eyes to disappear.
Tori and Cat slowly eat the broken cookie pieces while Jules grabs her hot chocolate and sips it, letting the warmth combat the coldness inside her.
‘Can I ask,’ Cat says after a few minutes of quiet. ‘Do you regret the fling?’
Jules knows her answer, because the spark of hope is still fighting the cold inside her. ‘No.’
‘Do you still want to be with him?’
‘Yes.’ She puts her hot chocolate down. ‘I’ve still got feelings, strong ones, and he didn’t do anything wrong, except let his insecurities get the better of him so he thought he had to push me away. And yes, it feels shit that he thought he had to—especially the second time after I told him how I felt—and he needs to apologise for that. But after our week together, I know him and I honestly believe he didn’t mean it.’
‘Okay,’ Cat says simply.
‘Yeah.’ Tori slings an arm around Jules’s shoulders again, leaning her forehead against Jules’s temple. ‘If you believe it then we do too.’
‘Let’s make another plan, like we said.’ Cat reaches for her pens but Jules grabs her arm to stop her.
‘I don’t want a plan.’
‘You sure?’ Tori checks, pulling back slightly. ‘You’re not retreating back into your comfort zone, are you?’
Jules shakes her head. ‘I laid it all out for him. My feelings for him and what I want. I have no more cards to play.’ She travels her finger over the patterns on her pyjama pants. ‘It’s up to him now. He’ll either pick me or he won’t. And if he doesn’t …’
‘If he doesn’t?’
Jules takes a deep breath and reaches for her friends’ hands, squeezing them. ‘I don’t want to hide from opportunities for another three years. I’ve got coffees with James McCarthy and Samantha lined up, and a resignation letter ready to submit.’
Chapter 32
The weekend sucks. Cameron can’t stop thinking about Jules, about the tight look on her face when he had the nerve to lie to her about their fling just being about sex. Like he hadn’t got intimate with her in more ways than that. He dreams in rose-tinted highlight reels and wakes up with momentary warmth before it gets sucked out and he’s left with that dry, grinding feeling again.
He reads through their text chain, finally seeing the message he’d missed before his presentation.
Jules: You’re going to be fantastic. You’re intelligent and eloquent and you care about your topic. You’ve got this. I believe in you.
Re-reading it is akin to holding his palm over a flame, but he still looks at it multiple times a day.
At work on Monday, he doesn’t listen to music at his desk. He gets Rawiri to call IT on his behalf. He takes the stairs so he doesn’t end up in the lift with her, because he won’t get to push her against the wall and kiss her until she moans this time. And he’d be thinking about it like a creep because the sex did mean something, and he can’t shake it from his head. Or his heart.
In their team meeting, Zoe tells him he looks, ‘Like death warmed up’, which is better than he feels.
Not seeing Jules in the office used to be about self-preservation. It’s more like self-flagellation now, and he deserves every stepping-on-Lego sensation he feels for kicking her heart. For lying to her. For running away like she begged him not to.
God, he’s a fucking dick.
