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That was a shit move, O’Neill.
“Here you go,” she said, unlocking the gate, swinging the chain link back. She stood back, her hand on her thin waist, her black pants tight across her thighs. Her hips.
I swallowed, tossing my keys in my palm. Trying to be casual. Pretending that something wasn’t shaken inside of me.
When I’d made the stupid decision to come back to Bonne Terre it had never occurred to me that Juliette would still be here. If I’d have thought I’d run into her, I never would have come. Because it hurt to look at her, it hurt to be reminded of what I’d felt that summer—of who, for three short months, I’d let myself believe I could be.
“Thank you,” Juliette said, brushing off her hands, “for being cool about—”
I put my hand up, shaking my head. The years behind us, those nights in the bayou, what I’d done to her in the end.
“It’s the least I could do, Juliette.”
And I’m sorry. More sorry than I can say.
For a second her face softened, and she was the girl I’d known.
“It’s a good thing you’re trying to do,” I said. “With that boy.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end thought better of it and just nodded.
I slid my key into the lock of Suzy’s door, every instinct fighting against the stupid impulse I had to touch her. Just once more. For all the years ahead.
Do not, I told myself, trying to be firm, trying to be reasonable, get yourself worked up over this woman again. Don’t do it.
“You know,” I said, turning to face her again, the sun behind her making me squint, my eye pound. “Your dad was right.”
“About what?” she asked on a tired little laugh that nearly broke my heart.
Don’t do it, you idiot.
The air around us crackled. She will take off your head and feed it to a dog, man. Do not be stupid.
But in the end I ignored the voice because she was a magnet to everything in me searching for a direction. I stepped close, close enough to breathe the breath she exhaled. Close enough to smell her skin, warm and spicy in the sunlight.
Her eyes dilated, her lips parted, but she didn’t move, didn’t back away and my body got hot, tight with a furious want.
The air was still between us, as if we were frozen in time. But inside I raged with hunger for her. Always for her.
I lifted my hand, slow, careful, ready for her to snap but she didn’t. I placed my calloused, shaking fingers against the perfection of her cheek. Her breath hitched and for a moment—the most perfect moment in ten miserable years—Juliette let me touch her.
And then, like the good girl she was, she stepped away from the riffraff.
“You’re way too good for the likes of me, Juliette Tremblant,” I murmured.
I got in Suzy and slammed the door. The humidity inside the car was an insulation between me and her, an insulation I needed. I needed metal and barbed wire and pit bulls straining at their leashes between us, because I knew, like I’d always known—underneath her totally justified anger, her reluctance, her disgust—I knew Juliette Tremblant wanted me as much as I wanted her.
I can’t see her again, I thought, starting the car, Suzy’s rumble a welcome sound. Familiar. This was my world. Suzy, my father waiting at home, the clothes on my back, my money in the bank.
And there was no place in it for Juliette.
And there was no place for me in Bonne Terre.
I was an O’Neill. One of the most notorious of them all, which meant that Juliette and the past and those fledgling dreams I thought I’d forgotten about were wasted.
And whatever I thought I was going to find in Bonne Terre, whatever peace or solace I was looking for—it wasn’t here. It wasn’t anywhere. Not for me.
Gaetan was right—I was always wanting what other people had. Coming back to The Manor, looking for the kid I’d been, the family I’d known.
I got hotel rooms and card games. One-night stands with women so beautiful they could only be fake. Late nights and later mornings, days vanishing under neon signs. That was my life. That’s what I got.
And it was time to get back to it.
JULIETTE
I shook. From the inside, through my blood and muscles, from my hair to my fingers, I shook with something I hadn’t felt in so long.
Anger. Yeah. Sure.
But desire.
Desire that churned through me and over me and under me.
I slammed the impound door too hard and the chain link rattled and bounced back at me. So, I slammed it again. And again. My hair flying, the gate rattling and crashing.
“Damn him!” I slammed the gate so hard it bounced, rebounded and stuck shut.
