Dear Heart, I Hate You

“Shit, Cal, what’d you do?”

His tone was so concerned, I couldn’t help but wonder what he thought it was that I might have done. Shoving that aside for the moment, I said, “I got scared.”

“And you pushed her away?” he asked, finishing my sentence for me.

“Not exactly. I took myself out of the equation.”

“I’m not following.”

“I stopped talking to her,” I said, the admission crushing me. The guilt I’d been carrying on my shoulders fell down around me like boulders once I said the words out loud.

“You stopped talking to her? Like you stopped returning her phone calls or what?”

I cleared my throat. “I stopped everything cold turkey, Coop. Didn’t return texts, calls, e-mails. No explanation. No nothing. I basically disappeared.”

My driver, who’d been acting like he’d been ignoring my phone conversation the whole time, caught my eye in the rearview mirror and shook his head in disgust.

“What the hell, Cal? That’s awful. Why would you do that to her?”

The last thing I needed was my little brother yelling at me over shit I already knew. I didn’t need to be chastised; I needed help.

Lowering my voice, I said, “Because I’m an idiot, okay? I was wrong. I made a mistake. I screwed up. I need to know how to fix it. If you’d done this to Katherine, what would you do to make her forgive you?”

“First of all, let’s be clear that I’d never do that to Katherine,” he said, his voice stern, angry even.

“Yeah, we already know you’re the perfect brother. Got it. Help me, please.”

“I wouldn’t apologize over the phone or through a text, that’s for sure. I’d make sure I apologized face-to-face,” he said, and I nodded along. That was a good idea, the in-person part. “And I’d do whatever it took to make her forgive me. Whatever it took, Cal.”

That one would be tougher, and I knew it.

“What if she won’t? Forgive me, that is?”

“If she’s what you really want, you can’t let her say no. And then you figure out what it will take to win her back, and do that.”

“Thanks, Coop.”

“Keep me updated.”

“I will.”

I ended the call and ignored the glances my driver shot at me in the mirror as I went about formulating a plan of attack. I had no idea where Jules’s head was, not to mention her heart. She could despise me by this point, and I wouldn’t blame her if she did, but I needed to convince her otherwise.

I had no idea how to go about doing that, but I sure as hell was going to try.

He’s Here

Jules

My arms filled with all of my things, I pushed my way through the apartment complex door with my hip and ran straight into a solid wall of . . . chest?

My morning coffee spilled and the client folders filled with paperwork I had been holding fell to the ground. I watched as the sheets scattered before muttering shit and rushing to grab them. Squatting, I started gathering them before hearing, “Let me help you.”

My heart thumped once, maybe twice, before it stopped beating altogether. Apparently, even my heart had a self-preservation mode. My breath hitched as a golf-ball-sized lump instantly formed in my throat.

How could four stupid words cause such an intense physical reaction?

My gaze moved slowly from his black shoes and followed the length of his jeans up past the formfitting black T-shirt before landing on my demise, the one thing that captured me in the first place, those horribly stupid perfect lips. I paused on them a little longer than I should have, and when I locked onto Cal’s hazel eyes, I had to stop myself from falling to the ground completely.