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But the questions didn’t come. He just quietly watched her, his blue eyes silently asking what he wanted to know. Stay or go?
She should tell him to go. He wasn’t supposed to be here.
Instead she reached out her hand, letting the tips of her fingers brush his.
Stay.
Wordlessly he stripped down to his undershirt and boxers and crawled into bed behind her. He drew her back against his firm chest, the front of his thighs cradling the backs of hers. A tiny sigh of contentment slipped out, feeling as though it had been ripped from the deepest, most private part of her.
It’s not like she hadn’t slept over with a guy before. She had. Once.
But never before had she slept with a man without sex. This was the first time that cuddling had been for comfort instead of post-coital habit. Julie was surprised by how right it felt. She’d always thought that if she let someone try to take care of her, it would feel like pity.
Instead it felt like she’d found a sense of home in someone else.
The last time she’d felt that was twenty years ago today, when her mom had lovingly pulled Julie’s hair into its little-girl ballerina bun and sent her off with her ballet carpool, with the promise that she and Daddy and Addie would be watching her from the audience.
It was a promise her mom hadn’t kept. The police had shown up instead.
Every year since then, on the anniversary of her family’s death, Julie had spent as much of the day and night as possible alone, determined that nobody would ever lure her into a sense of false promise.
Rationally she knew, of course, that it wasn’t her mother’s fault that she hadn’t kept her promise. The car accident hadn’t been anyone’s fault, really. But rationality didn’t stand a chance against self-protection.
Julie didn’t realize she’d spoken everything aloud until she felt Mitchell stiffen briefly behind her before he pulled her even closer, his hand splaying over her stomach before it slid up between her breasts.
Over her heart.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her hair.
The rightness of his simple response rocked through her, and she almost sobbed with regret at the way she was treating him. Not only had she dragged him into a sham relationship, but she’d gone on a date with another man as though what they’d shared was disposable.
She swallowed nervously. That last part, at least, she could come clean about.
“I went on a date tonight,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
The hand that had been idly stroking her hair paused for the briefest of seconds, and she braced herself for him to pull away. To leave her. Instead, he resumed his slow, comforting strokes on her head.
“Say something,” she begged.
“Did he kiss you?”
She licked her lips nervously. “No.”
“Did you want him to?”
Julie started to turn to face him, but he held her still. “No!”
“And you came home early. Alone.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Then I’d say I have nothing to worry about.”
“But Mitchell—”
“Shh. Go to sleep now.”
Julie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the sheer kindness of this man. And when she thought she heard him whisper “I love you,” she blocked that out too.
