Julia is drunk as a skunk. So when we’re finished making out, I carry her out of the house and down the dirt road.
I carry her right across that fucking set for every shitty, predatory producer to see, and I look Richard in the eye while I do it.
I go straight to my cottage, where I find the camera propped on the top shelf of the closet. I wave into it and say, “Fuck you, and fuck your show, Richard,” before tossing a cap over it and taking my girl to bed.
Curled up in bed, I hold her.
My fingers trail through her wild tresses in a continuous soothing motion. She smells sweet like bourbon and looks peaceful.
When I marched her into my room like a caveman and swooped us both under the covers, she succumbed to a drunken fit of giggles. But soon her laughing subsided, replaced by contented sighs, and then the deep, even breaths that come with peaceful sleep.
I watch her now. A pink tinge from long days spent in the sun kisses her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Dark eyelashes rest against her skin. They remind me of a doll my mother once had, which Oma has held on to till this day.
Julia’s lips part slightly, her breath escaping gently between them.
It’s her hands, though. Her fingers grip the fabric of my T-shirt when every other part of her body has slipped into relaxation. They curl into the fabric, squeezing me, pulling me closer, as though begging me to stay.
The guilt of making her subconsciously second-guess my loyalty or my desire to be anywhere but with her hits me hard. It makes every joint in my body throb with pain.
I’ve spent years telling myself I’d never fall in love because it would hurt too much to lose that person. What I didn’t realize is that the ultimate pain would be the thought of not having her at all.
I slip my hand over her back, tugging her closer, needing her nearer. Her leg hitches over my hip, one hand slowly releasing my shirt as it slips up my chest, my throat, and around the back of my neck, as though she trusts me to carry her through this.
And I’m not sure I deserve that trust, but I know without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that I will work myself to death to be worthy.
For her, there’s literally nothing I wouldn’t do. It’s a shocking realization, especially for someone who’s toed the line of selfishness for so many years.
I stare at her doll-like face, realizing that she’s changed me profoundly, deeply. She’s captured my heart and altered my entire mindset. She’s left an indelible mark on my soul, brought back to life a part of me that I didn’t even realize had died on a snowy back road on Christmas Day twenty-two years ago.
I never lost my ability to love, but I lost my desire to seek it out.
Until she found me.
A soft, contented sigh spills from her lips, and I’m taken back to that night on the cruise ship.
I’d sat awake watching her, counting her breaths, praying to a God I’ve never believed in for her to take one more. I’d stayed back, kept a respectable distance. I didn’t know her then. Not like I do now.
Back then, I sat at the foot of the bed. Now I can’t get close enough to satisfy my need to be near her.
“Emmett,” she murmurs, nuzzling her face into the crook of my neck. “Don’t go.”
I don’t think she’s aware of what she’s saying, or why, but I kiss the tip of her nose and burrow close. “There’s nowhere else for me to be.”
With her in my arms, I allow myself to rest and relax for the first time in days.
And when the sound of my phone ringing wakes us, we’re still clinging to each other, in a warm, tangled mess of limbs.
Julia groans, one hand reaching for her forehead as she rolls onto her back. “This was not the way to ease myself back into alcohol.”
I chuckle, kissing the top of her hand. “Let me grab this. Then I’ll make you some food. Get you back on your feet.”
I reach over her to swipe my phone off the bedside table. The contract lawyer’s name flashing across my screen has mepushing up to sitting, going from dopey to alert in one fell swoop.
I lean against the bed frame and pull Julia into my lap before answering the phone with a gruff “Hello?”
The man’s nasally voice comes through the line. “Emmett, Maxwell here. You got a minute?” he says, getting straight to business.
Much like on our first call, he doesn’t mess around with niceties. The man comes off more like a walking, talking computer than anything else, which for my purposes suits me just fine.
