Jake saw the answer to the question that had begun this entire conversation. “You met Reid when you were vulnerable.”
Screwing up her nose, Juliet said, “I hate putting it that way, but yes. I met him one month into my probationary period and two days after the notice from the landlord. The thing with Reid is, he can be charming—in a way that I can see is superficial now, but I had no real experience with guys back then—”
“Why not?” Jake couldn’t help but interrupt. “I have a ton of cousins in Samoa and the guys aren’t monks, and the girls haven’t taken the veil either.”
Her shoulders shook. “Say that in front of your pastor. I dare you.”
“My mother would clip me upside the head even if she does have to stand on a stepladder to reach.”
Juliet’s laughter wrapped around him, and he sat there and took the delicious punishment.
“My grandparents were elderly,” she said when she’d caught her breath. “I used to come home right after school and from the office management course—I was terrified they’d fall or something.”
No wonder they’d left her all they had; if he had to guess, she’d have cooked for them too, done the housework, pretty much been their lifeline. He still couldn’t find it in his heart to forgive them for how they’d hurt her.
“So I was virgin territory for Reid.” Juliet made gagging sounds. “I think it was how green I was that hooked him. He was a big man in sports at the time, but we met in an open-late supermarket of all places. He’d come hunting ice cream and I was doing my grocery shopping and he made a cheeky comment about all the vegetables in my cart, and…”
A shrug. “He’s really good at paying attention to a person when he wants to; no one had ever before paid that much attention to me. And he was a big star. I mean, that day his face was actually on a woman’s magazine at checkout. He picked it up and made a crack about how he’d cut his face shaving when the picture was taken and could I see where they’d covered it with makeup?”
Jake told himself to keep his lips zipped.
“Yeah, I know, Jacob,” Juliet said pointedly. “You don’t have to give yourself a hernia holding in the commentary.”
“Okay, Juliet. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Her laugh was utterly impenitent. But then she leaned forward and kissed him, and the taste of her went to his head. “It’s weird,” she whispered against his lips, “but I’m starting to find your grump-face kinda cute.”
No one in his life had called Jake cute. He sat there and took it from Jules.
“So yeah,” she said, ending the kiss even as his heart kicked, “it was all probably a line, and he picked up that magazine to make sure I knew who he was, but it worked. I was awed and flattered to have his attention—I was probably like a puppy dog to him. I came when called, was always happy to see him, was delighted when he called me his girlfriend. I showered him with adoration, and Reid is all about adoration.”
“Seems like a perfect match.”
“Sarcasm much?”
Placing his empty coffee mug to the side, he held up his hands. “No, seriously. I know more than one guy married to his most devoted groupie. It works for them—she worships him and he basks in it.” Jake found the lack of give and take weird, but he’d grown up with parents who were partners.
“Well, this groupie grew up,” Juliet said. “Iris and Everett began to give me more and more responsibility, and I began to understand that I was being treated with respect, my opinions valued—and I saw that Reid didn’t respect me. He put me down a lot, and at first, I let it get to me. But after a while, I began to question what he said, question him, and it was never going to work after that.”
“Because he’s a limp-dicked washout who needs his ego massaged on a regular basis.”
“Yep and yep.” She put her coffee down on a side table. “There you have it—the short and sordid history of Juliet Nelisi.”
“I see tough and inspiring.”
“Sure.” Despite the casual agreement, shutters were falling over her eyes in front of him, the moment of intimate connection drifting out of reach.
No fucking way was he going to let that happen. He jumped into deep water to recapture it… and invited her into a place no one else had ever seen. “Sometimes I can’t remember what Calypso looked like when she laughed.”
The words fell between them, raw and rough. Words he’d never spoken aloud to anyone, not even his brothers.
Juliet had been about to open her laptop. Taking her hand off it, she shifted her gaze to him. “Jake.”
Suddenly his eyes were hot, as hot as the day when the small beating sound had stopped in Calypso’s hospital room. Her parents had never liked him, but while conscious, Calypso had made them promise they wouldn’t kick him out—then or ever, and so he’d been there when she went silent.
That promise was also why they’d allowed him to be a pallbearer.
Swallowing hard, he looked down. His hair fell across his forehead. “I keep wondering if she’d have survived if she hadn’t given birth not that long before. Would she have been stronger? Could she have fought longer?”
“Jake, no.” A rustle of movement, then Juliet was kneeling in front of him, her hand stroking over his hair. “Meningitis is a pitiless disease. And the strain that took Calypso was a vicious one—you know that. It was all over the papers, how the authorities were afraid it was turning into an epidemic.”
It felt like he was turning himself inside out, and he never did that. Never. But Juliet had known Calypso, the only other person who’d really known her. She’d loved her too.
“It doesn’t matter,” he admitted, the words stones grinding in his throat. “I know the logic of it, but Jules, if you’d seen her in that hospital bed…” It was too hard to speak now, his eyes so hot it hurt. He squeezed them shut, his hands fists.
Juliet continued to stroke his hair, continued to murmur comforting things that he didn’t hear, but that mattered. She mattered. This strong woman who’d survived so much and yet who’d found the capacity in her to forgive, to grow.
Raising his head, he opened his eyes, saw that hers were wet. “Jules.” A shaky word.
Cupping the back of her head, he pressed his forehead to hers and stopped fighting the wet heat in his eyes. Her own tears fell silent and hot down her cheeks. “I missed her every single day,” she whispered. “Then I couldn’t even come to her funeral.”
“I read out your message,” he told her through the agony wrenching them both. “I knew she’d want that.”
No more words, both of them too torn. They cried, and then they just sat there in that awkward position that neither of them made any move to alter. When she shifted her head slightly, he moved with her, and suddenly their lips were touching and he was tasting the salt and wet of her, and her hands were on his thighs as she arched up to taste him back.
Wet and hot and full of need.
It was a distant siren that brought him back to his senses. Breaking the kiss, he looked over toward the room where his daughter slept. He could just see the edge of her body; she hadn’t moved from when he’d last looked over.