Next to Never (Fall Away #4.5)

But somehow, I’ve never really stopped idolizing her. Not even a little. I like her style, and as I grew up, I started wanting to be more like her. Someone sexy that drives my man wild. She’s carefree and walks with confidence.

Sometimes I come over just to look in her closet and try on the soft, flowing shirts and Jimmy Choos.

“Hi,” I finally say, coming to sit down at the kitchen table.

She turns her head, her green eyes sparkling with a smile. “Well, hey. This is a nice surprise. I don’t feel like I see you enough.”

I take off my bag and set it on the table. “It always smells like cookies in here. No wonder Jax keeps you around.”

She snorts, carrying the plant across the kitchen to set on the back porch. “Yeah, he says he keeps me around because I’m hot.”

Whatever. Jax likes to joke, but they’re perfect together, and he knows it. Just like Jared and Tate and Madoc and Fallon.

“So what’s up?” She dusts off her hands on her jean shorts.

“Nothing. Just thought I’d catch a ride with you tonight.”

“Sounds good,” she says. “I’ll be ready in a few.”

Jax and Jared usually go early to help set up and organize the spectators, while Tate and Juliet come separately, so they have a car to bring the kids home early and get them in bed.

Juliet only has Hawke, but she and Jax took in lots of foster kids over the years. They didn’t have anyone staying with them now, though. A fact that, I think, Hawke enjoys. He’s an only child who hardly ever gets to enjoy being an only child.

“So . . .” I feel my heartbeat pick up pace. “Are you writing anything right now?”

I know what I want to ask her, and I feel tempted to spit it out, but I’m not sure I really want to know, either. So I ease myself into it.

If the person who sent the book wanted to be known, they would’ve included a return address.

But I have to know who sent it.

She finishes wrapping up their leftovers from dinner and puts them in the fridge. “I’m working on something. Another part of the same series,” she explains. “It’s hard to find time to write, though, and this summer shouldn’t allow much more time.”

Juliet writes fantasy when she’s not teaching—it’s a series about teens who live in a postapocalyptic society where ancient warrior regimes have taken over.

However, she and Jax finally got their summer camp open up at Black Hawk Lake, so her time off from teaching wouldn’t really be time off. She’ll be busy all summer, which will leave little time for writing.

I trace the grain of the wood of the table and ask hesitantly, “Have you ever . . .” I look up at her. “Like, written romance or anything?”

She stops what she’s doing and looks at me. I suddenly feel awkward.

But she shakes her head. “No,” she replies quietly, looking away again. “Never had much interest. Why do you ask?”

I shrug. “No reason.”

But disappointment weighs on me. She’s the only writer I know.

I draw in a deep breath and stand up. Screw it. It’s Dylan’s night. I’ll finish the book, because I can’t not, but it’s almost time for some fun.

“Can I check out your closet?”

She shoots me a very happy look. She doesn’t have any daughters, so I know she enjoys being able to do girly things with Dylan and me.

“Have at it,” she says. “We’re about the same size now, so feel free to borrow something.” And then whisks past me, whispering, “Something that will piss off your brothers.”

I let out a laugh and grab my bag to head upstairs.

Hell yeah.

***

Jase . . .

I climbed the stairs, hearing my father’s coughing break up the silence in the otherwise quiet penthouse. The skyscrapers of Chicago loomed outside the windows behind me, blurred in the rain spilling down the glass, and I passed pictures on the walls of all of our great orchestrated family moments. My parents decided to stay here at their apartment in the city, close to the doctors, when we found out my father was dying.

Go figure. I was the one who smoked, but he got lung cancer.

I pushed open his bedroom door and stepped inside. The home nurse was leaning over his bed, holding up his cup as he struggled to drink, and then she put it down and pulled up his covers.

She walked over to me, carrying a bloodstained hand towel and whispering, “He’s close to the end, I’m afraid.”

I cast him a glance, taking in his frail hands gripping the sheet, his sunken cheeks and chapped lips, and his withered body, so small and thin. His white pajamas looked like a sheet thrown over a skeleton.

My father has always been larger than life to me. I never felt close to him, but as a kid, he was still a god. Now look at him.

He started coughing again, and I nodded at the nurse, brushing past her to head over to his side of the bed.

I reached down and wrapped an arm around his convulsing body, trying to support him as he hunched over and hacked. “Here, let me.”

“Stop it!” he barked, slapping at my arms. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.”

Jesus. I released him and stood, running a hand through my hair as I watched his body shake and fight for air. He pulled away the towel, and there was more blood. I clenched my jaw, suddenly unnerved. This wasn’t my father.

He fell back on his pillows again, breathing hard, and I turned away, taking off my suit jacket. I tossed it on a chair and loosened my tie, taking a deep breath and trying to face him.