“I think that is worse,” Julian says as he takes a left, and soon, we’re stopped against the sidewalk, and I know we’ve arrived at the house, but I can’t turn my attention away from him.
“What is worse?”
“Watching her get sick, seeing her take her last breath,” he tells me, and the lump in my throat makes it difficult to swallow my emotions. “Come on.” Julian takes my hand and presses a kiss to my knuckles before he exits the car. He rounds the front before opening my door and helping me from the seat.
We’re standing on a road lined with beautiful homes. Nothing like his house, but they’re gorgeous with architecture from years ago, still in pristine condition.
“These are all so stunning.”
“The people tend to look after the properties, and especially those who have the porches out front. Normally, you’d find a road like this filled with tourists taking photos.”
Julian takes my hand, and we walk down the road. It’s only a few houses down when he stops and turns me around. We’d been facing the wrong way. When my eyes land on the familiar house, I know in my heart this is it. Nothing has changed. The photo and the reality are one and the same. My chest tightens. I pull out the photo I’ve kept in my purse since my mother died, and I knew this is where I would one day end up and hold it against the backdrop of the home in front of me.
“It’s a carbon copy,” Julian says. “Do you want to see if you can go inside?”
Do I? “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to bother the owners. No, this is enough. Just seeing it, knowing it’s real.” He nods silently and then stands there for a long while beside me. We just look at the house, and I can almost see my mother when she was younger. As if a movie is playing out in my mind, I watch her racing down the street, playing with friends. I imagine her coming home from dates, and her dad waiting outside for her. Everything she did was on this street— the most formative years of her life.
Tears sting my eyes, and I have to blink back the emotion.
Chapter 27
Julian
Nea has been different over the past few days. She’s attentive, affectionate, and I’ve found myself falling more and more each day I spend with her. I don’t want to rush into something, but I would like her to move in with me. The need to have her close has taken over my thoughts, and each day she comes to work, I want to broach the question, but I chicken out when we actually sit down together.
Driving her to the apartment she’s renting each night has become more difficult, and I know I need to make a move. I don’t want to say goodnight to her and leave her alone while I return to my bed with thoughts of her on my mind constantly.
And I know that waking up beside her will be perfect in every way. She’s spent the night a few times, but having her in my space all the time is something I crave so badly. With Shay, I was happy to have her leave and go off on her shopping sprees. I would, at times, sleep in my studio, telling her I was busy when all I needed was space.
With Nea, everything is different.
“Good morning,” Nea says excitedly from the doorway as she enters the studio. In her hand, she’s carrying my favorite mug filled to the brim with black coffee I know I’m going to swallow easily because I had a late-night getting artwork ready for another show. This time, my paintings will be transported to New York.
“You made me a coffee?”
With a blush, she grins and nods. “I always make you coffee.”
It’s now or never, Julian. As I think it, the words tumble from my mouth without a second thought. “What would you think about you making me a coffee in our kitchen?”
She looks at me for a while before she narrows those pretty eyes and pins me with a stare. I can tell she’s thinking and rethinking her response because she’s chewing on her lower lip. I’ve noticed her do it over the past couple of weeks since I really took my time to take her in.
“And perhaps waking up next to me every morning?” I continue when she doesn’t answer. I keep my expression schooled, but the nervous energy rushing through me is too much to take. I don’t want her to say no, but I also can’t force her into doing something she’s not ready for.
I would prefer she say yes because that’s what she would like, rather than feel obligated to do it because I want it. Nea steps closer to me, her perfume taking hold of me just like it did the first day she walked into this house.
I can’t stop thinking about that moment. When I first laid my eyes on her, I knew I was fucked. She was too different, in a mesmerizing way, for me to ever not fall in love with her. I may have fought it, I may have been completely and utterly fearful of it, but now that it’s happened, I know I can’t stop it.
“Is that you being coy and cute?” she finally asks, leaning up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to my lips. Her scent, her taste, everything captures me like a fly caught in a spider’s web. That’s what she’s done to me. And I can’t deny I love every second.
“I love you,” I tell her, the truth slipping free. “And I want you beside me.” There are no more secrets between us. This one was always the biggest. I knew I had fallen in love with her the night I took her to dinner in the Quarter. I knew it when she smiled
