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“Oh. You… know where they live?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t ever get tempted to go there and find them?” My voice was small when I asked the question – as if that might lessen the pain of his answer.
“I thought about it every business trip I’ve ever taken out here. I thought about it today,” Julian admitted in a murmur, pulling my leg over his lap. I leaned closer into him, smoothing my hand up his chest to his shoulder. I rubbed it gently as he spoke. “Figured it was almost like a last chance. But I decided against it.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s perfectly adjusted now. She’s moved on from her memories of me, and it would be selfish for me to barrel into her life now and ruin the peace. She’s still too young to fully understand the situation. She wouldn’t know how to handle the fact that her mother has fed her lies about me. She’d just feel confusion and resentment, and all I want is for her to be happy. I don’t want her to feel what I feel.”
I gazed up at Julian, his stunning profile highlighted from the soft glow of the lamp. My heart ached for him, and I wished so badly that he could just see Lucie, but I understood exactly what he meant.
“You’re a good man to give her the peace to move on,” I said. “Most people would just indulge their impulses without thinking about how it might affect the other person.” I cupped the back of his neck and rubbed gently. “I think it’s noble for you to take on the hurt for her. Not everybody would do that,” I said, thinking about the nights I heard my mother’s muffled crying in her room. She was broken up over me, the arrest, and everything I’d been forced to do in college. A couple nights, she cav
ed and came to my room, demanding what the hell I was thinking, and how I could let those girls treat me that way. Didn’t I respect myself?
Those nights hurt.
But they were few and far between considering how many other nights she just held it in, crying into her pillow.
“Maybe in the future, you two can reconnect, and you can give her your side of the story,” I said.
“I hope she understands by then why I eventually stopped trying to see her.”
“She will,” I whispered. “Everyone finds out eventually how fragile the healing process is. Maybe she’ll figure it out after her first big breakup, and she’ll understand that even after the wound’s closed, it’s still delicate, and sensitive, and it still needs time.”
Julian looked me in the eye. “What about yours?” he asked.
“What? My wound?” I offered a little smile. “It’s been healing since we left the Hamptons. It’s in pretty good shape so far.”
“Good.” Julian put the letter on the nightstand, pulling me fully onto his lap. He pressed his lips against my forehead as I straddled him. “By the way, you’re good at this,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Making me happy.”
I closed my eyes and let out a sigh of pure content.
“You have that touch with me, too,” I murmured, cutting myself off right there, because there was so much more I could say.
You make me happy.
Happier than I ever thought I deserved.
And I think I’m falling in love with you.
My heartbeat rose in my chest as Julian tipped my chin up to kiss me. I wanted so badly to say the words, and to just get them off my chest. But I didn’t.
I told myself to save it for another time.
35
SARA
Julian and I had fallen asleep together a few hours after he had accidentally woken me up.
But I thought I had dreamed him sitting up in bed again in the middle of the night, the glow of his phone illuminating his silhouette in the dark of the room. I remembered blinking sleepily at him, and I could have sworn that twice, I reached for him and murmured his name.
