Southern Gentleman (Charleston Heat 3)

Tears clump on her eyelashes. She lets her spoon fall into her bowl with a clank. I sit back so that we’re eye to eye on the couch. Candlelight flickers across her hair. The curve of her cheek.

My heart is pounding, and I don’t know why.

“I don’t know what it’s like to lose a parent,” I say. “But I do know how it feels to want so badly for something to have gone differently. It haunts you. It hurts.”

“It does.” Julia turns her head a little to look at me. “You know that’s part of the reason why I chose to keep this baby—because I lost my family, and this is a way of creating a new one. It won’t be the same, obviously, but maybe it’s not supposed to be. Maybe this is my chance to make lemonade.”

“When life hands you lemons,” I say with a tight grin because I can’t fucking breathe. “Right.”

“I’d actually prefer to use those lemons as a twist in an ice cold martini. But I guess lemonade is the next best thing when you’re pregnant.”

Can’t help it. I reach up and catch a tear with my thumb. I’m gripped by the desire to take her face in my hand. Hold her and kiss her and tell her, without having to say a thing, how much I admire her.

You’re devastating.

You’re stupid gorgeous.

You’re brave in all the best ways, and you’re making me want to be brave again, too.

Which is dangerous.

So fucking dangerous. I’m going to hurt one or both of us. All three of us.

But I still find myself leaning into the conversation anyway. Like I have nothing to lose.

Like I deserve another chance.

“Takes courage,” I say. “To put yourself out there again with this baby after losing so much. I’m in awe. How? Why?”

Her eyes bounce between mine. “Because I have to. What’s the alternative? Staying down? Living small and scared? Yeah, it takes balls to get back up after you’ve had your ass handed to you. When you’ve lost the people who matter most to you. But the people whose lives and careers I admire are the ones who kept trying. Who fucked up or fell short or lost again and again but still got up one more time. Maybe I’ve read too much fiction, but I’ve found that it’s usually that last ditch effort that turns things around. If it doesn’t, at least you go down trying, you know? At least you did the brave thing. The right thing.”

“But what if you didn’t do the right thing? What if you did something really fucking terrible?”

She looks at me. Waits for me to explain.

When I don’t, she continues.

“You learn from it. You take it as a lesson and try to do right the next time around. Just because you’re a villain in one story doesn’t mean you can’t be a hero in another. I happen to like characters with complicated pasts. Nuance is a big turn on.”

When was the last time I spoke so honestly to someone?

When was the last time someone spoke so honestly to me?

It’s terrifying.

It’s the fucking tits.

“You saying bad guys turn you on?”

“I’m saying guys who sometimes do bad things for good reasons get me wet. Humanity in all its messy, imperfect glory is sexy AF.”

I laugh. What a peach this woman is. Cracking dirty jokes in the middle of crying.

Also. Deep down, I knew ending my marriage was the right move. But it all felt so horrible—my ex’s heartbreak, my family’s too, the emotional and financial fallout—that the bad kind of overshadowed the good.

When is breaking someone’s heart ever not a bad thing?

When your reasons are good.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, at some point during my divorce, I’d considered that concept. Turned it over in my head and heart, ultimately discarding it because it meant I could absolve myself of guilt, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet.

What if I’m never ready?

What if I’m ready now?

“You learn all that from romance?” I ask.

“Sure as hell did,” she says proudly. “It’s a genre that’s criminally underrated.”

“I believe it.”

“So are you going to tell me about this bad thing you did? Or are you going to politely ignore me like you did in there”—she tilts her head toward the kitchen—“and hit play on the Starks?”

I look at her, running my tongue along the inside edge of my front teeth.

I feel close. Close to ready.

But that’s not ready enough. This is years of emotional weight I’m trying to shed. Years of fucked up thinking and living.

I lean forward and hit play. I half expect Julia to call me out. Call me a coward.

I deserve it.

But instead she settles into the couch and picks up her spoon.

Her shoulder touches mine. I don’t move. Neither does she.

We watch Ned Stark’s life unravel in companionable silence. And even though part of me feels riled up inside, another part feels calm and contented and quiet.