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“Kia, please,” Jules’ voice whimpers, hands raking down the skin of my back, sending another jolt of need through my system.
“I’m trying to be the good guy here, Jules,” I told her, my voice rough even to my own ears.
Her lips found my neck, her warm breath moving over the skin. “Just this once, don’t be the good guy.” I was considering it for a split second before she finished the thought. “Be someone else.”
My eyes slammed shut as my air rushed out of me much like a sigh because, well, that was what it was.
Because she was just solidifying the sneaking, niggling suspicion that had made me pull away in the first place.
This wasn’t about me.
This was about her.
About her pain.
Her disappointment.
Her need to escape.
She would have found that with any man.
It had nothing to do with me.
And my pride could take a lot.
It had taken hit after hit after hit since the first time I met Jules.
But it couldn’t take this.
I couldn’t let myself be nothing more than catharsis for her when this… this was going to mean a lot to me. It was going to mean everything to me.
And I knew, like I knew the sun would rise in the morning that she would never look at me the same after, once she had gotten a chance to think it through, to analyze it with a clear mind. She would never let me near her again. Partly because she thought it was being kind, not leading me on. And maybe even in part because she was resentful that I took advantage of a weak moment.
Better to deal with her disappointment now than deal with her anger for years to come.
“Unfortunately, Jules, I can’t be someone else. I’m just me. And I can’t take advantage of the fact that you’re acting on hard feelings.”
Against me, her body stiffened.
Her hands moved away from my skin, sliding out of my shirt touching only the material of it as her body pulled backward. She took the couple centimeters behind her body and the wall to make sure our foreheads were no longer touching.
“Okay.”
Her voice was ice.
Frigid.
A sound I had only heard once or twice before when she and Gunner were going at it.
Pure disdain.
Toward me.
The realization was a punch to my gut even as she slid away from me, rolling her neck.
“Jules…” I tried, voice soft as I attempted to grab her wrist.
She yanked almost violently away.
“It’s fine.”
“Clearly, it’s not,” I countered.
“I’m a grown woman, Kai. If I say something is fine, it’s fine. Let it go.”
“Where are you going?” I asked as she grabbed her purse.
“I’m getting coffee,” she declared, storming out before I could stop her.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I should have followed her.
Because she never came back.
–
Flashback – 24 months before –
She wasn’t blind.
People could accuse her – and often did – of being a lot of things. Stubborn. Detached. Ambitious. But no one would ever accuse her of being unobservant.
She saw everything.
She saw the heavy lids on Smith’s eyes, indicating another night of restlessness, nightmares horrific enough to keep him from even trying to sleep.
She saw Finn’s bloody fingernails, the way the pads of his fingertips were pruned even after getting to work, suggesting he’d been awake for hours with his hands in bleachy water, scrubbing things that were already clean enough.
She saw the wrinkled mess of Lincoln’s shirt, knowing that he had likely crashed on the couch at work instead of at home because he and whichever girl he was dating at the time were on the outs.
She saw the way Miller stiffened when someone mentioned foreign concepts to this crew like family. And love.
She saw everything inside the office that had become like a second home to her.
She wasn’t blind.
To it.
To him.
To the way he was overly attentive, the way he noticed things most didn’t.
Without her even having to explain them, he seemed to get her moods, the triggers for them, how to help her overcome them.
If she hadn’t noticed those things after working with him for as long as she had, you’d have to call her dumb.
She’d noticed.
But she’d also noticed him coming in with bags of foil-wrapped burritos for him and Miller, with cardboard carriers full of coffee from She’s Bean Around despite not drinking coffee himself. She’d noticed him picking up mail at the PO box for Quin, picking up Lincoln when he needed a designated driver, grocery shopping for Ranger to bring him things that he could not get from the land in the Barrens where he lived.
Kai, she had concluded a long time ago, was just that kind of guy. Kind. Selfless. Attentive. Able to predict what others might want or need.
It would have been weird if he did all those things for others and did nothing at all for her.
