BY TWO O’CLOCK THE next day, I started looking forward to the evening. Or, more accurately, when the office would be empty besides Juniper and me.
It had nothing to do with the high-heeled princess I shared my office with and everything to do with, well, everyone else. I hadn’t been able to go more than five minutes without an interruption today, and all I needed was some fucking peace and quiet.
Peace, quiet, and Juniper St. James were not a usual combination, but working together on the case last night had been an odd relief of sorts. We got along better when speaking a common language, and law was it.
As the bustle of the office slowed, I shifted my focus from the new case I was working on with Daphne to Grayson’s lawsuit. I didn’t like deceiving Juniper about the full story surrounding our work, but it was better this way. Grayson had asked me to keep it under wraps until we had a better idea if there was even enough potential for taking action. He had enough spotlights on him already during the middle of the football season, and I understood that.
Not wanting Juniper to beat me to the punch this time, I ordered dinner from an Italian restaurant around the corner. I overheard her raving about the restaurant’s gnocchi to Cameron earlier today—one of my many interruptions. But at least it gave me an idea for dinner; the last thing I needed was for her to spend even more money on me during a deal that was supposed to be an even trade.
First, the football game, and then dinner. It was one reason I felt justified in fixing her brakes: it would cancel out the cost of the tickets from last week. And tonight’s dinner would make up for last night’s.
“Oh, I love this place!” A smile stretched onto Juniper’s face as she looked inside the paper bag I set on her desk, and I quickly pushed down the satisfaction that rose inside me at seeing it. “Thank you for this. They have the best—”
“Gnocchi,” I finished for her. “I know.”
“You’ve had it?” She looked up at me with surprise and hope in her eyes. Like I might suddenly become bearable if I also understood the wonders of Victoria’s Eatery. Was I invisible? Did she forget that I could hear everything she said all day, every day, in this goddamn office?
“No.” I rolled my eyes before looking away. “You told Cameron that earlier.”
“Oh.” Her voice deflated. “I didn’t think you were listening.”
“Kinda hard to focus on work when you’re rambling about pasta.”
“Cameron asked me for a restaurant recommendation because his mom’s in town,” Juniper said defensively. “Also, gnocchi is not pasta, Julian.”
“Are you sure about that?” I muttered. “It definitely looks like pasta.”
Juniper pursed her lips together. “It’s a debatable topic that, in my opinion, is hardly debatable at all.”
I bit down on my tongue to keep my reply in check. I didn’t give a damn what it was actually called, and frankly, I shouldn’t be annoyed at all. It wasn’t like Cameron could have asked me for recommendations. We both knew I wasn’t the person to go to for that sort of thing. My palate was less than refined, and Cameron knew it. We’d survived on whatever cheap food we could find in law school.
“Let’s just get to work,” I said, pulling out the reports I’d reviewed last night.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Juniper nod. And then, just like that, the mood shifted. She asked me about Gabriel’s initial scans when he was an infant, scribbling notes between quick bites of pasta. Sorry, not pasta. And then we moved on to looking at Gabriel’s most recent scans, and before I knew it, the sky was a hue of navy. The lights in the hallway outside the office were off. I’d learned they were motion sensor activated, which told me no one else was here but us.
When I glanced back at Juniper, she was in the middle of a massive yawn.
“Time to call it a night, I think,” I said, even though I had an urge to keep working. We’d made progress, but if Grayson called me tomorrow, I still wouldn’t have good news to tell him. And that bothered me.
Juniper soundlessly began to pack her things. I waited until she’d slipped on her light pink blazer, the one that distinctly reminded me of when my sisters forced me to watch Legally Blonde, before I spoke again.
“Come on,” I said, “I’ll drive you home.”
I expected an argument, but all she did was blink twice at me before nodding. An unbidden chuckle slipped from my lips.
“Tired, Daisy?”
She nodded again, and her lack of energy, the way the corners of her lips tipped down, made me fight the urge to scoop her back up into my arms like last night. I wanted a reaction; I wanted her alive again.
But I didn’t do anything more than jerk my head toward the door. She followed me silently to the car, saying very little on the drive to her apartment, too. Only once she stepped out onto the sidewalk did she glance back at me and cock her head to the side. “You’re taking tomorrow off, right? For the party?”
I nodded slowly, feeling a surprising amount of unease settle in my gut.
“See you on Saturday, then,” she said.
And then she was gone. Before I could even thank her for the extra work she put in tonight. The long hours deserved gratitude, at the very least.
Our deal wasn’t fair, and it irked me. Even with the dinner, even with fixing her brakes. Her exhaustion tonight made that more than clear—it wasn’t fair. And I’d have to find a way to change that.
With a sigh, I waited until I saw her light flick on in her apartment before heading home. Once again, I couldn’t sleep after crawling into bed, and this time, it had nothing to do with texts from Noah. It did have to do with Juniper, though. Juniper and Gemma. Driving home together. At night. Tomorrow.
I pulled out my phone, checking the weather.
It was going to rain. It wasn’t snow, but it wasn’t nothing, either.
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing my brain not to think about Juni’s tears or the beeping of hospital machines. It was years ago now, but the memories had never faded. Not even a little, and tonight was no different. My brain wasn’t listening to my request to forget; it never did when it came to anything involving Juniper.
That accident changed everything. Juniper thought it was because I blamed her for it, and that was honestly for the best. Better than her knowing the wake-up call it gave me, the realization it caused me as a teenager of why she got so under my skin, of why her determination to sneak into my family bothered me so much when I—
It didn’t matter anymore. The confusion. The anger. It launched a resolution in me, and I hadn’t been able to escape it since.
Fuck.
With the flick of my thumb, I switched to my messages app and sent a text to my mom. There was a change of plans for tomorrow.
The shock on Juniper’s face when I walked into the office the following day was enjoyable. Her expression was back to being animated and scrutinizing. Irritation and confusion swept over her features, and I sat back, watching her try to piece the puzzle together. She wanted to know why I was in the office when I said I’d be gone, but she was visibly trying not to care. Not to ask.
It was all very Juni-like.
So was her reaction when she walked into Gemma’s apartment later that night to find me sitting on my sister’s couch. Her jaw came unhinged as she gaped at me before pulling herself together and facing Gemma with a look of disgust.
“Do you realize you have an interloper on your couch?”
Gemma winced apologetically. “Julian asked if he could get a ride at the last minute, too.”
Juniper’s sharp gaze jerked back to me. I smiled, twirling Gemma’s car keys around my finger. “I think something might be wrong with my brakes, too.”
A lie, and she knew it.
“And you couldn’t fix them?” she challenged. “Imagine that.”
“I’ll be in the car,” I said, getting to my feet and striding toward the door. When I brushed past little Miss Elle Woods, I choked a bit on the sudden cloud of floral perfume. God, that was going to fuck with my concentration while driving, wasn’t it?
As soon as the apartment door shut behind me, I heard Juniper groan to Gemma.
She could be mad. I’d let her rant to Gemma all she liked about me; that was fine. I didn’t care if she was angry. I cared that we didn’t relive the Halloween weekend from nearly a decade ago, when thick snow had blanketed the ground and the two of them hadn’t made it to the party.
Unsurprisingly, the car ride was quiet. But not in the way that it was yesterday. Tension simmered beneath the silence tonight. Anger and anxiety—a mix of it. Rain pelted against the windows, reaffirming my decision to drive Juniper and Gemma home. As proud as Gemma was, I knew driving in bad weather made her nervous. Actually, I suspected any kind of travel made her nervous. And Juniper was so eager to prove herself all the damn time that it led to disastrous decision-making.
Gemma made Juniper sit in the front, trying to be nice. Or something. But it made the entire ride awkward and unpleasant. All I could smell was her. All I could feel was her irritation, her presence. But after two hours of breathing in bouquets of roses, we finally made it to Whitebridge.
Juniper huffed exaggeratedly as she got out of the car in front of her parents’ house—an idyllic two-story in the center of our small town. She promised Gemma she would see her tomorrow at the party before giving me a quick glance filled with bitterness.
Feeling’s mutual, Lily.
I pulled back into the road, and it took Gemma approximately half a second before she jumped on me.
“I thought maybe since you were working together, the two of you might have…fixed things.”
“Fixed?”
Gemma was delusional if she thought that Juniper and I could be fixed. That would imply that we were broken, which couldn’t be further from the truth. This was just the way we were. This was the way we always would be, too.
“You know.” Gemma sighed. “Figure things out.”
“What’s to figure out?”
I saw Gemma throw her hands up in the rearview mirror. “Why you hate each other.”
“I know why I hate her.”
“And why’s that?”
Gemma’s tone turned slightly hostile, which always happened when we broached this subject. It was the only reason I ever felt bad about my less-than-ideal relationship with Juniper—because it bothered Gemma to no end that we didn’t get along.
“Because no matter where I go, I can’t fucking escape her.”
There was a slight pause. A silence that had a pulse in the car.
“That’s why you went to California for college, isn’t it?”
I scoffed, ignoring how my stomach flipped. “Yeah, I moved across the country to get away from Juniper. It definitely had nothing to do with the D1 football scholarship.”
Gemma hummed, raising her brows. She tapped her fingers on the car door armrest like she was contemplating my answer. Wasn’t sure what there was to contemplate, though.
“How was the football game last week?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.
“Good.” I turned the last corner of our trip, driving down our childhood street until I saw the old Victorian we called home looming before me. Leaves swirled to the wet ground, painting autumn on the pavement. “Knights won.”
Gemma’s eyes connected with mine in the rearview mirror. Blue met blue.
“And I hear that Juni is hitting it off with Noah.”
I looked away, focusing on parking in our driveway beside the other cars of our siblings and parents. “I don’t know about hitting it off.”
A scoff sounded from the back seat. “You haven’t seen their texts.”
I put the car in park with more force than I probably needed to before turning to narrow my eyes at my sister. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
My sisters rarely pissed me off. A little annoyed or irritated, sure. But that skin-crawling vexation was reserved for other people in my life. Right now, though, as Gemma shrugged and jumped out of the car without answering me…I found my fingers wrapping tightly around the gear stick. Hard.
“Gemma!” I called after her, but the door slammed anyway.
I watched her skip through the light rain and the fall gloom, disappearing into the shelter of the open garage.
Fuck, I needed a drink. But I knew I probably wouldn’t get one, not until our house was party-ready. God, I hoped everything went off without a hitch this weekend.
Many years, it didn’t. Nine years ago, it was the accident. Four years ago, it was Johnny Lewis climbing on top of the kitchen table to belt out Thriller before falling and earning a trip to the hospital. And last year, we almost had to cancel the party because my parents struggled to afford it.
All we needed this year was no snow, no tabletop belters, and no last-minute cancellations. Luckily, I had enough in my bank account to help fund the annual get-together this year, so I wasn’t concerned about the last one.
But the other thing I needed to happen? Juniper. I needed Juniper at the party, even though I hated admitting that. If she was at my house, in my kitchen, downing the apple pie shots my mom always recruited me to make, she wouldn’t be spending time weaseling her way further into my friends’ lives. Into my life.
Halloween had already been established as something I had to share with her.
My friends, though? That was new. And I didn’t like it. Actually, I hated it.
I hated it a fucking lot.
The Briggs Family Halloween party was a Whitebridge staple.
My parents invited nearly the entire town…which had its pros and its cons. Pro: I got all my catching up done in one night; no need to make multiple arrangements to see high school classmates or family friends. Con: There were people in town I had absolutely no interest in catching up with.
For one, I hoped Kelly didn’t show tonight. We dated for about nine months during our senior year of high school before going through what I thought was a mutual breakup. She’d planned to attend a university in New York, and with me going to California, we hadn’t wanted to attempt a long-distance relationship. But for the last ten-some years, she’d acted like I was a cold-hearted asshole who dumped her out of the blue.
I was standing in the kitchen with my dad when the first guests arrived—who luckily were not Kelly. With a peek down the hall, I was unsurprised when Juniper strolled through the front door with her parents a little past eight o’clock.
I also shouldn’t have been surprised to see her wearing that familiar short and pleated skirt, but hell, I still did a double take.
Gemma and Juniper had been dressing as Girl Scouts for Halloween for years—ever since they were kicked out of their fourth-grade troop for shady under-the-lunch-table Girl Scout cookie dealings during the infamous Whitebridge scandal of 2005.
Okay, maybe not that infamous.
I wasn’t sure if they started the Halloween costume tradition as an act of rebellion or as some sort of consolation—since they had been allowed to keep their green sashes and berets. But now, it was undoubtedly an act of irony. One I could usually appreciate.
Juniper ran into Josie and Genevieve first—my two youngest sisters—giving them both hugs before making her way into our living room. Tall, black candelabras and glowing jack-o’-lanterns lit the space, giving it a spooky glow. My mom was next in the line of greetings, giving Juniper a big hug before accepting a platter of cupcakes from her.
Juniper hadn’t been lying the other day; my mom loved her. Jenny Briggs had never been a very strict parent. She maintained firm boundaries, but her concern was first and foremost for her children’s happiness. And whenever Gemma was with Juniper, she was happy. Which was all fine and whatever…until Gemma ended up in a hospital bed with a bad concussion and a collection of broken bones. And Juniper…well, there wasn’t anything happy about that night.
“You haven’t told us much about the new job.”
At my dad’s gruff voice, I turned to face him. He was busy filling a barrel with an assortment of beer that likely cost more than a day’s work in his shop.
“I share an office with Juniper,” I said, thinking that should sum it up.
Dad gave a hearty chuckle. “Small world, isn’t it?”
“Too small,” I grunted.
“You could always come back home,” he offered. “I miss having you around at work.”
“I miss being around the shop,” I said honestly. “But…”
But Gardner Law was a good place for me. Even with Juniper there. They cared about their clients, and I felt like I was doing something with truly meaningful impact. I didn’t know how to say that to my dad, though. I didn’t want to diminish what he did or his service to this community. He was here for people when they needed him, and that was important, too. Working with him had been meaningful to me, just in a different way.
“But you have big fish to fry,” he finished for me. An inkling of a smile appeared on my dad’s face, the most I ever really saw from him. Not because he wasn’t happy but because he showed it in his eyes. They swept over me with a look of pride that affected me more than I dared to admit. “I know you do, Julian, and I’m excited for you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, feeling my throat tighten with emotion I wasn’t expecting. He nodded, clapping me on the shoulder before bringing the beer into the living room for people to grab.
More and more guests flooded into the house, and I refilled the punch pitchers while sipping on a beer. I used to treat myself to an entire row of apple pie shots, but my party days ended the moment I left my undergrad days behind. Those four years had been my escape, my break from being the third parent in the house. Ending up as captain had been like transitioning to a different type of big brother, but it still wasn’t the same. It wasn’t picking Josie up from play practice before getting Gianna from soccer and bringing them home to make dinner while my mom graded papers and my dad finished changing someone’s oil in the garage.
I sometimes wondered if I had taken a chance on the pros, would I be where Noah was? Still living in a party? Sometimes I regretted not finding out. Sometimes I was happy that I didn’t. I probably could have been on that field with Grayson and Noah. I didn’t admit to being damn good at much, but I was one hell of a quarterback.
Football was a gamble for so many reasons, though. There wasn’t always control over where you played nor where you traveled. The income was great, but it wasn’t reliable. What would happen if I got injured in my first season? My career could end in the blink of an eye, all while I had people counting on me.
I needed something where I could be here consistently for my family. I needed something I could be passionate about for the rest of my life, not just through my prime years.
“You’re quiet tonight,” my mom commented. I hadn’t even noticed her enter the kitchen, but she stood next to me, watching the house fill up. I knew this was the one pause she’d allow herself before going off to mingle and greet guests.
“Busy mind,” I said with a shrug.
“Anything you want to get off of it?”
I shook my head. It wasn’t the time, and it wasn’t anything I’d dare tell my mom. I never wanted her to think I wasn’t happy where I was or with the choices I made. Because I was.
“Are you—”
Interrupting my mom, I swore beneath my breath as a short guy with dark hair slipped in the front door. He wore our hometown football jersey and jeans, which had to be the most unoriginal Halloween costume I’d ever seen. Even more unoriginal than wearing the same thing for the last seventeen years.
But that wasn’t what bothered me.
“What the hell is he doing here?”
My mom made that familiar judgmental noise in her throat. “You need to learn to let go of grudges, honey. You hold on to them way too long.”
I scowled, gritting my teeth as Greg fucking Kennedy sidled up to Juni, doing that thing where he put a hand on the wall behind her and leaned in, being a blatant flirt.
“He’s an ass.”
I ignored how my mom tsked in response. Not because of my swearing. She couldn’t care less about that. But she did have a very no-nonsense policy on name-calling.
“Who is?” Gemma popped up next to me. I didn’t look away from Greg and Juni, but I’d know her curious voice anywhere. I didn’t need to answer for her to figure it out, though. After a few beats of silence, she sighed exaggeratedly. “Oh, I should have known.”
“Do they still talk?” I asked while studying how Juniper tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and flashed a smile that couldn’t be genuine. Could it?
When Gemma withheld an answer, I turned to see her grin.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Why do you care?”
I glanced back at Juniper; she seemed to be shrinking into the horrendous floral wallpaper that had been there since the ’90s. “I don’t care how you look at me,” I said to Gemma. “I just—”
“No, why do you care about Juni and Greg?”
I immediately busied myself with restacking the pumpkin-printed napkins. “I don’t care about that either. I’m just curious. As her best friend, I’d think you’d be discouraging this. She doesn’t exactly look enthused.” I waved a hand in Juniper and Greg’s direction. “Plus, he cheated on her at least once in high school.”
“Is Jules ranting about Juniper again?”
Josie popped up beside Gemma, her short auburn curls bouncing beneath her wizard hat. Big Lord of the Rings fan, that one.
Gemma nodded, almost proudly, as she stuck her chin in the air. “Yep. I’m about to rescue her from Greg Kennedy, but honestly, I think Julian should do it. You know, since he feels so strongly about the two of them.”
“He sure gives her a lot of attention,” Josie said, tapping her finger on her chin. Drama was Josie’s thing, and she sure was leaning into it tonight.
“He really does.” Janie joined us in the kitchen, leaning on the countertop with that goddamn mischievous expression I adored and hated all at once.
Mostly hated, at the moment.
Janie was the second oldest after Gemma and the sister I affectionately referred to as my mini-me. Bound for law school while currently playing D1 soccer, Janie had followed closely in my footsteps.
I stopped listening to all my sisters as Greg stalked away from Juniper, bursting through the door leading to our garage. I liked that he’d disappeared, but what the hell was he planning to do out there?
Leaving Josie, Janie, and Gemma behind, I followed Greg into the garage, and the minute he turned around to reveal that face I’d grown up despising, I started saying shit I probably shouldn’t.
“What are you doing, Kennedy?”
His lips curled as soon as he saw me, but he nodded at the cigarette in his hand. “Smoke break.”
The garage door was open. My parents had decorated the space as an area for the party to spill out into, but the rain of the last few days left a severe chill in the air, and I doubted anyone would leave the warm house. Meaning it was just me, Greg Kennedy, and a few bedsheet ghosts out here.
“Don’t you think it’s a little embarrassing how you throw yourself at Juniper every time she comes home?” I asked, shoving my hands into my pockets.
“Fuck off, Briggs,” Kennedy snarled, flicking his cigarette ash to the ground.
“Did you forget this is my house?”
His eyes rolled up, and I immediately had to resist the urge to punch him. “It’s none of your business.”
I begged to differ. “Shit that happens at my house is, actually, my business.”
“Fine,” Kennedy conceded, “but nothing else involving Juniper is.”
“False.”
As much as I hated it, for the past two decades, everything involving Juniper involved me. We all but grew up in the same house, graduated from the same high school, pursued the same careers, and now started at the same job. The exact same job.
“False?” Greg puffed his chest out, clearly feeling challenged. I reveled the hell out of that because there was nothing I loved more than watching guys who were full of shit attempt to flash nonexistent peacock feathers. “Is that so?”
God, I wanted to deflate this son of a bitch so bad. He was always on my ass in high school, a sore goddamn loser about not being team captain our senior year. It irked me to no end because I tried so damn hard to make our team into a family, and he always wanted to ruin it.
“Yeah.” My heart raced at the prospect of bringing him down a peg or two. “You don’t even deserve to look at her, Kennedy. Leave her the fuck alone.”
Greg shoulder-checked me as he stepped into my space. “Since when did you start admitting that you give a shit about Juniper?”
Words danced on the tip of my tongue, and I knew I shouldn’t say them. They’d come back to haunt me.
But it was Halloween. Let the haunting begin.
Besides, seeing the hopeful light drain from Greg’s eyes would be so sweet and so worth it. What kind of guy thought he could waltz back up to a girl after cheating on her ten years ago? Juniper had talent and success—especially compared to this waste of space. She was all pretty and perfect and Juni. Of course now Greg wanted her.
Of course Noah wanted her.
Of course—shit.
My lips curved upward as I stared down my high school football teammate. If he thought he would go back in there and breathe down Juni’s neck again, he was dead wrong.
“See, you don’t care about her,” Greg scoffed when I didn’t say anything.
I squared my shoulders. “Wrong.”
“Since when?” he repeated, taking the bait exactly how I wanted him to.
Because I never, ever passed up the opportunity to make Greg Kennedy regret cheating on Juniper.
“Since I started fucking her.”
