Up until twenty minutes ago, I never knew the outcome of Marjorie’s case. I assumed the drunk driver was served a hefty punishment for his crime. I had no clue he was offered a plea bargain by the DA mere weeks before he disappeared. That DA happened to be Brandon’s father, Vincent McGee.
The erroneous mishandling of Marjorie’s case exposes why Brandon is interested in her file, but I’m still wary I am crossing a line by giving Brandon Marjorie’s sealed file. They were locked in a vault so tight, I had to use the head of my department’s credentials to find them. I wasn’t given access to his passcodes for no reason. He trusts me with them, and I’m not willing to lose his trust to help an acquaintance, but since the person asking is Brandon, I don’t know if I can say no.
After a few minutes of silent deliberation, I lock my eyes with Julian’s before nudging my head to my bedroom. “Why don’t you head up? I’ll join you in a minute.”
“I can wait.” His swift reply hides his excitement at being invited to spend the night, and I won’t mention how happy he is that I used my voice to express myself instead of my hands.
“It’s okay. Head up. I won’t be a minute.”
“All right.” When he tucks a strand of dirty-blonde hair behind my ear, I lean into his palm, seeking comfort for what I know will hurt me no matter how hard I try to brush it off as being nothing more than work. This is as personal as it gets for me. I’ll never see Brandon as just an acquaintance. “Don’t be too long.”
When I nod, Julian presses a second kiss to my temple before standing from his crouched position and making his way to the staircase of my loft bedroom. My apartment is barely five hundred square feet in size, but the loft bedroom perched above the living area makes good use of the space. Apartments in New York don’t come cheap, let alone ones close to the office. I’m only renting my apartment since most of my trust fund went toward having cochlear implants inserted into my ears a little over three years ago. They cost more per ear than four years of pre-law study. Were they worth it? I don’t know yet. I never felt disadvantaged being deaf—except that one time.
I snap out of my dreary thoughts when the shower in the attached bathroom of my room switches on. My hearing isn’t as good as a person born without profound hearing loss, and my voice is cringingly deep, but it’s good enough for me to hear my raging heart as much as I can feel it. It is thumping so fast it’s battering my ribs. Something so simple shouldn’t make me so nervous, but it does.
After a stern warning on how my past has no right to affect my future, I divert my focus to the screen of my MacBook Pro. Although the file Brandon is chasing is directly in front of me, it’s the scanned version every clue hunter hates. There are more redacted pages than text-filled ones.
With that in mind, I snag my keys off the desk before shouting Julian’s name, cringing when my voice comes out sounding like a man’s.
Due to the size of my loft and the fact Julian rarely showers with the door closed, he responds rather quickly. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to pop down to the office for a minute. I won’t be long.”
I’m reasonably sure he tells me to wait, but since I’ve already made up my mind, and I regularly use my poor hearing to my advantage, I continue for the door.
The doorman of my building greets me with a dip of his hat before his opening of the thick wooden door blasts the foyer with ghastly humid air. New York’s weather is nothing like what I faced in California. It’s more severe here with ice and snow every winter, and the humidity is atrocious. I’ve barely seen the sun past the skyscrapers the past year, and my California tan is paying for the controversy. I had quite the tan compliments to the lazy weekends I spent reading at Venice Beach.
That’s where I met Julian. I wasn’t on the prowl for a date. That wasn’t something I had ever planned to do, but when you’re wrangling a rude waiter unwilling to read the order I had written for her, sometimes you have to accept help from a stranger.
It would have been rude for me to reject Julian’s request to dine with me after he jumped to my defense. He was charming, and the first guy I had spoken to in almost three years. One casual dinner turned into an afternoon movie date. Our friendly movie date extended to a thirteen-hour marathon text conversation where we organized to dine together again the following weekend.
There wasn’t a great amount of sexual chemistry the first few months we knew one another. Julian was, and still is, gorgeous, but I wasn’t looking for any type of relationship. It was just nice having someone to talk to.
Julian is an audiologist. His family has a range of hearing clinics on both the east and west side of the country. They specialize in hearing aids for the aged and cochlear implants for newborn babies. Since he grew up around people with hearing impediments, he learned ASL at a young age.
Around three months into our friendship, he made an appointment with me to meet with his father about having cochlear implants inserted. He was the first person since Dr. Giorgio to suggest them, and I wasn’t a fan of the idea.
Julian’s constant pushing for me to reconsider my objectives wedged a six-month gap into our friendship. We only reunited after I had a scare on the metro. A woman I had accidentally bumped into couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t verbally apologize for my mistake. She wanted an apology, and from what I gathered between the many thrusts of her hands in my face, she wanted it immediately.
I was so shaken by the incident, I broke down. I stopped attending school. I failed to show up for lectures. I shut myself away from the world as I did the weeks following Joey’s death.
Instead of my phone being blown up by Brandon offering his friendship, Julian reached out to me. He brought me food, held back my hair when I vomited through the panic attacks rendering me immobile, and promised nothing I could ever tell him would change his opinion of me.
I believed him.
I still do.
I told him everything—the home invasion when I was five, giving my virginity to Brandon, my parents’ accident. I even told him a story I had never shared with anyone.
He didn’t respond as I had predicted.
He held me until my tears dried, and the pain went away.
We’ve been together ever since.
My pace slows as good memories from my past slowly filter through my head. Julian is in a good chunk of them. Just remembering how he sounded like a duck the first time I heard him speak stretches a massive smile across my face. Then his smile when I said his name for the first time. Gosh—it was the stuff dreams are made out of. He’s a true gentleman, so much so, I’m spinning on my heels before I’m even halfway to my office building.
My quick pivot has me crashing into a wall of hardness. As my hand shoots up to rub the sting in my nose, I throw my head back and laugh. I recognize the scent of the aftershave the man who bumped into me is wearing. I would never forget it.
