Southern Gentleman (Charleston Heat 3)

I want Julia. I’m definitely hurting all three of us—her, the baby, me—by not letting her in.

I’m so fucking tired of denying myself. I’m gonna take what I want. Finally.

But first, I have to tell her the truth. I owe her that much.

I just hope she doesn’t run after hearing it.* * *My heart is pounding on the drive home.

I’m also half hard. I keep catching whiffs of Julia’s perfume. And the top she’s wearing doesn’t hide the fact that her nipples get hard every time I look at her. Like she’s just as aroused by my attention as I am by hers.

One of the five hundred things I adore about her. She doesn’t lie, and neither does her body. She’s honest to a fault. Even when the truth is messy. Inconvenient.

I have so much to learn from her.

My hand shakes a little as I put the truck in park in my driveway. The sound of the engine shifts and so does the mood inside the car.

I look at Julia.

She looks at me.

“Julia.”

That’s it. That’s all I say. Her name.

But it’s enough to let her know what I’m about to say.

She reaches for my hand. Tangles her fingers in mine.

“Tell your inner villain not to worry,” she says. “I’m not going to fix you. I’m definitely not going to save you. But I am going to listen.”

The world tells us that men aren’t supposed to have feelings. If we do, we damn well better not show them.

But I feel more like a man than I have in years when I look at Julia and pry open my chest, blood and guts and truth spilling out between us.

“Three years ago, I walked out on my wife. She was a good girl, and she loved me, and I broke her heart and destroyed her life.”Chapter Twenty-ThreeGreysonI wait for Julia to recoil in horror.

Will her exit be dramatic, I wonder? Will she call me out and slap me across the face and slam the door on her way out? Or will her disgust be of a more quiet variety, where she silently judges me, slowly begins to loathe me as she stops answering my calls?

I wait.

But Julia just looks at me. Her fingers moving gently through mine.

In her eyes—

I don’t see loathing.

I see sympathy.

Makes the throb inside my chest and ears lessen. Just the tiniest bit.

Just enough to encourage me to keep going.

“I’ve struggled to forgive myself for breaking the promises I made to a woman whose life I completely leveled.”

“Understandable,” Julia says, nodding. “I think that’s a doozy by any standard.”

“On paper, what Cameron and I had was perfect. Our families were old friends. We grew up in the same neighborhood, moved in the same circles. Both of us had successful careers. From the beginning, everyone loved that we were, well, falling in love. They called us the Barbie and Ken of Charleston.”

Julia’s lips twitch.

“I know, I know, totally gross,” I say, scoffing. “But looking back, I see that I was swept up in it all. The fairy tale. How perfect everything looked from the outside. Now I understand that I was more in love with how happy that story made everyone else—my family especially—than I was with Cameron. I was in love with how it all looked on paper and in pictures.”

“But your parents are so cool. They don’t strike me as the type to be caught up in appearances. Pretty sure they didn’t need you to be the picture perfect son who married the picture perfect girl.”

“I know. My parents are awesome. Authentic. I love them for it. They didn’t put that pressure on me to have, this, like, insanely perfect, insanely accomplished life. I put that pressure on myself. I wanted to be that son for them.”

“Why?”

Lifting a shoulder in a shrug, I say, “Not sure. Maybe I thought that that was the kind of kid they deserved because they gave me every privilege imaginable. Maybe I, you know, wanted to save them from how stressed I remembered them being when I was growing up. They’re pretty chill now. But they were overwhelmed a lot when Ford and I were younger. Like all parents, I imagine.”

“I felt that too with my parents—the stress,” Julia says. “Parenting is hard. As we’re about to find out first-hand.”

I give her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—we’ll figure it out, Julia. People way less prepared than we are do it every damn day.”

“You’re right.” She gives me a smile. “I mean, I hope we’ll figure it out, anyway.”

A beat of silence passes between us. She’s waiting for me to continue. Patiently.

“It became clear pretty quickly once Cameron and I were married that we wanted different things. We both worked a ton, which didn’t help matters.”

“Who, you? A workaholic?” Julia arches a brow. “Never.”