I put my hand on the center of his chest and pushed him toward the porch.
“There’s no way I can make it out unscathed.”
He covered my hand on his chest with his own. “Who said you had to? Who said any of us do?”
I looked up at him. “I do.” I pushed a little harder and he cleared the door. Closing it behind him, I locked it and sank to the floor, burying my face in my knees.
“Jules.” Berk banged on the door. “Jules, don’t run away from me. Don’t push me away.” The ‘again’ hung in his words. I was doing this again.
I muffled my tears and rushed upstairs, burying my head under my pillow.
I was a fucking coward and I’d lost the best thing that had ever happened to me. Better that than have him realize over time just how much better he could do as the prying eyes and judgement wore me down to nothing.
33
Berk
Jules was The Letter Girl. She was the woman I’d fallen in love with through her words and the one I’d slowly discovered my feelings for right across the street.
The whole time I fought my feelings for her, it was because I’d been afraid of betraying—well, her. She’d kept that from me. The letters I’d read and re-read hundreds of times. The woman I’d finally said goodbye to in my last letter, she was Jules all this time.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d stood on her porch, knocking and calling her name. Any longer and someone would probably call the cops on me for harassment. The pain in her eyes made me want to tear the place apart and find out who exactly had hurt her—other than her own family.
I walked back across the street in a daze. A swell of emotions so tangled and mixed up, I could barely hold onto one for longer than a second. Crushing sadness, confusion, anger that she’d kept this from me, relief that I’d finally found TLG and then devastation at losing her again.
And she was pushing me away, acting like we were so mismatched when we weren’t. No one would think that—she was amazing. That’s what they’d see. No one who knew Jules could hate her… but she’d said her mom and sister were awful to her?
None of it made sense. She seemed more stressed about strangers’ opinions. What was that about?
“Did you get any treats from Jules after you busted her?” LJ came down the steps.
“She broke up with me.” Stunned, I stood in the living room, trying to remember how to breathe.
“She broke up with you.” LJ held onto my shoulders. “Why?”
“She said something about not being able to live under my spotlight.”
“I don’t blame her after the shit people have been spewing online. I’ve reported as much of it as I could. Give her some time.”
“What stuff? Show me.” Once they’d told me about Jules being TLG, I’d jumped off the porch and rushed to her house. Anything else didn’t matter in that moment, except finding her and getting some answers. Now that need for answers was killed by the ache in my chest. What had I missed? What could anyone say to make her break down like that and push me away?
Marisa fired up her laptop and pulled up a whole bunch of sites and the comments sections. Ones I wished she hadn’t. The Dough Ho. That’s what they called Jules. And a whole shit load of other screwed up things. Their comments made me want to knock on every one of their doors and punch them in the face.
I sat on Marisa’s bed and buried my head in my hands. “Why are they picking on her? She’s fucking gorgeous. She’s everything anyone could ever want in a girlfriend. Why do they even care?”
“It’s juicy gossip. Her letter wasn’t exactly PG, more like XXX. How’d they even get it?”
“No idea.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “For a while I was carrying them with me everywhere. One of them could’ve fallen out of my bag.”
“But how’d they figure out it was Jules?” LJ leaned against Marisa’s desk.
“No idea. Maybe when classes started up, they figured out her handwriting or something? We’ve got a freaking CSI team out there doing handwriting samples. These assholes don’t have anything better to do?”
I scrambled up the steps to my backpack. The one I always had with me, and ripped it open. The bundle with the present in it was tucked to the side like it always was. Shoving my hand down deep toward the bottom, I hit the stack of letters that I’d stashed there. I pulled them out and snapped off the rubber band.
Marisa and LJ stood in the doorway.
The thick stack bounced on my bed, falling over. I fanned out the letters. “There’s a few missing.” I’d written dates on the top corners of them.
“You take that backpack with you all the time.” LJ picked up one of the envelopes. I snatched it out of his hand.
It was bad enough when I’d thought these letters were from The Letter Girl, but now that I knew these were from Jules, no one else was getting their hands on them.
“I know I do.” I raked my fingers through my hair, tugging on the roots. “I should’ve left them here. I shouldn’t have taken them with me. Someone must have gotten into my backpack and taken them.”
“Who would do that, Berk? Why would they take a couple letters and not any of the other stuff in your bag?” She sat on the edge of my bed.
“I don’t know. Maybe someone wanting to be an asshole or embarrassing me or something. Get at me through Jules.” I clenched my fists at my sides. Whoever had done this deserved to get their ass kicked. My heart ached for Jules. I wanted to storm back across the street, bust down her door and be the big spoon until she felt better.
Her tears were like razor blades to my heart. All I wanted to do was protect her from all this. What Emmett had said to me made so much more sense now. They couldn’t attack me, so they went for the soft target, trying to tear Jules down.
And the stuff about her mom. That hurt, knowing I’d been there and she’d been in pain—that her own damn mom had made her feel like she was anything less than the beautiful, kickass Jules she was. I’d thought my mom walking out was bad, but now I didn’t know what was worse: being abandoned or having to look at the person every day and never feeling like they loved you, or waiting for another emotional blow from them.
“This is all my fault.” I banged my head against the wall. “If I hadn’t been carrying these things around with me everywhere, they’d have never gotten them.”
Marisa and LJ exchanged looks. “Why would some random person do that? And why would they want to drag Jules into this? To embarrass her? Why?”
“Because people are assholes.”
“Who’s had access to your bag?”
“Everyone. Like you said, I take it with me almost everywhere.”
“Come on, man. Some random person isn’t going to rummage through your backpack to take a letter they don’t even know is in there.”
This line of questioning wasn’t going anywhere I wanted it to go. “Then who did it?” I pushed off the wall, going toe-to-toe with LJ.
“Dude, chill out.” He pushed his hands against my chest.
“Fine, I’ll say it. You can come and glower at me. It was probably Alexis.” Marisa wedged herself between me and LJ.