“Please, strangers don’t sleep naked together.”
“You really need to stop bringing that up when I’m finally warming to you.”
I grinned. “You set me up on purpose. The things I could follow that up with . . .”
“Restrain yourself, Romeo.” She laughed, a delicate yet somehow full-throated laugh that made me feel . . . way too much. “Okay, okay, we’re doing this. This is crazy, but we’re doing this. I guess type out ‘chapter one’?”
This was insane.
It was also the only time I could ever remember genuinely smiling while looking at a computer.
So I forced my fingers to type it out. Chapter One: The Beginning of Us.
Chapter Thirteen
KEATON
I was really doing this, wasn’t I? Telling a complete stranger, one I wasn’t even sure I liked all that much, something this private? Something this . . . what? Beautiful? Ugly? Real?
He stopped typing and looked up at me. “Ready when you are.”
“Why are you doing this?” I leaned in. “You aren’t getting anything out of it.” He locked eyes with me, and I wasn’t sure if he was angry or just thinking of a good reason that wasn’t self-serving.
“It’s a good distraction.” Julian looked away. “Maybe I need one just as much as you do.”
“A distraction?” My eyebrows shot up. “Can’t you just buy one?”
His lips broke out into a smile that almost made me choke on my own tongue. “Not this kind.”
“You mean the sad kind?”
His lips twitched as he seemed to study me, his green eyes so piercing and intense that I felt like I needed to hide behind something. “You’re procrastinating.”
“No, I’m not,” I lied to his face, and then cleared my throat awkwardly because I was doing exactly that.
“Oh.” He grinned. “You really are. Look at it this way: you have to get it out somehow. May as well do it when you have someone who’s going to pour you a shot every time you finish a chapter.”
I snorted. “So you want me drunk?”
“No, I just want you relaxed.” He drummed his fingertips against the table and sighed, running a hand through his chocolate hair. “I meant it, about the distraction.”
I waited a few beats while he shifted in his seat like he was sitting on a secret and was afraid to spill it.
“My mom.” His words were quieter than usual, his posture stiff. “She just died.”
I didn’t say “sorry,” mainly because I knew that sorry wouldn’t bring her back, sorry was too easy to say, just like “I love you.” Words so casually and callously thrown around lost their meaning fast, especially when you received them from people who would drive a knife into your back when you weren’t looking. At least that was my experience in life, words were too damn easy.
“I didn’t know,” I finally said. “Is that why you came up here?”
He stared down at the table. “It’s a lot of the same furniture.”
“Here in the cabin?”
He nodded. “Yeah, walking in here was like stepping into the past. I’m not sure what I expected to find.”
“Peace.” I couldn’t stop myself from saying it. His shocked expression met mine briefly before he rested his hands on the keyboard again.
“Well, I’m here.” He jutted his chin at me. “I’m trying to find my peace. Maybe it’s time you found yours?”
My throat all but closed up as I stared at him, tears in my eyes, tears I fought like hell to keep in. “He stole my breakfast burrito.”
Julian let out a low chuckle. “Is that the first sentence or . . .”
I laughed through my tears. “Why don’t I tell you the story and we can decide how to write it down?”
“Deal.” He crossed his arms.
And I smiled a real smile, one of the first ones in a long time as I told him how I met Noah and how I fell in love.
And Julian listened like it mattered.
Like he cared.
Not the person I would have expected to be sitting across from me the minute I broke my silence on my grief.
A rich playboy.
Who refused to let me say no.
Chapter Fourteen
JULIAN
There’s something extremely humbling about hearing someone list the attributes and talents of a person who seemingly had no faults.
That was Noah to Keaton.
The perfect man, best friend, confidant, all wrapped up into one shiny package.
The guy had teased her relentlessly when they first met, stole her food when she was volunteering at the hospital, and then called her out for taking a selfie in the hallway. He told her that it wasn’t appropriate with the patients walking in the background.
He’d been wearing Hawaiian board shorts and a shirt that said Wicked Cool.
He always wore flip-flops.
And he always smiled.
He was exactly the opposite of who I imagined a girl like Keaton would date. I mean Hawaiian clothes and flip-flops versus a celeb on his private jet? I envisioned her with a celebrity or a male model, maybe even an athlete, not a Hawaiian-shorts-wearing self-proclaimed Star Wars nerd who had a burrito obsession and wasn’t afraid to call her out.