THE PAST WEEK HAD been torture, and frankly, I deserved it.
Being in the office with Juniper was more impossible than usual. In a way, it proved my point. If we continued whatever the fuck we’d started at the wedding, and then again the other night, there was no way in hell I’d be able to concentrate on work. Existing around her was distracting enough, and at the moment, our interactions were only clipped greetings and necessary case updates.
I hated it.
So, as it turned out, Juniper was also right.
We couldn’t go back.
We rarely got along to begin with, but now we existed in an entirely new dimension. This wasn’t anything like it was before. It wasn’t mild irritation or playful teasing. This was painful. It felt like every breath I took was only enough air to get by until the next inhale, and I’d never get back to fully living unless I had her.
But I had some faith that our relationship would come back around if I waited long enough.
At least until Thanksgiving. Then, that faith quickly vanished.
Thanksgiving was one of those yearly constants. My whole family would spend the morning in the kitchen, we’d eat dinner together midafternoon, and then the St. James family would come over at night to kick off the Christmas season by watching a movie picked by one of our moms. Sometimes we’d even start pulling out decorations, and Juniper and Gemma would run around our old house with strings of lights.
I watched Katherine and Brooks St. James walk in the front door, eagerly waiting to see Juni follow them inside. I’d seen Juniper for the last ten days straight, and after one whole day without her, I was fucking miserable.
But she wasn’t there. My heart sank.
And then a hand slapped my chest.
“What did you do?”
“Jesus, Gemma.” I rubbed the spot she slapped and crossed my legs while sinking deeper into the couch. “I didn’t—”
I couldn’t even finish the sentence because it was such a fucking lie.
I did do something. I did a lot of somethings, including pinning Juniper to our office door and thrusting my fingers inside her until she cried into my mouth while coming.
And then I told her it could never happen again.
I shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have done any of it. But at least now I could live and die knowing what Juniper felt like, what her little gasps of desire sounded like. Fucking exquisite, all of it. Her taste. Christ, her taste.
“You’re such an ass.”
True, very true. After all, I was sitting next to my sister, thinking dirty things about her best friend. Reliving them, actually.
I felt Gemma’s eyes bore into the side of my head while I stared longingly at the door, hoping Juni would still walk through it.
“Oh, where’s Juniper?” I heard my mom ask Katherine in the background, followed by a quick explanation of how Juni hadn’t been feeling good.
“Ate too much turkey?” my dad joked, and light chuckles followed.
That wasn’t it. I knew Juni.
“What did you do?” Gemma hissed, repeating herself. “Did something happen at the wedding that Juni didn’t tell me?”
Everything happened at the wedding.
But I was curious…
“You talked to Juni about the wedding?”
“Of course I talked to Juni about the wedding.”
“And did she…what did she say?”
Gemma’s eyes narrowed. “Julian John Briggs, what did you do?”
I cleared my throat and looked back at my eldest sister, noticing how all my other sisters seemed to be leaning toward us with interest, too.
“I had a great time at the wedding,” I said, the biggest oversimplification and understatement all in one sentence. “And I think Juni enjoyed herself, too.”
It wasn’t a lie. Technically.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Gemma grunted, folding her arms across her chest.
“There might have been some problems at work this week,” I allowed.
Also not a lie. Not technically.
Gemma scowled. “I knew you did something. You’re always so hard on her for no reason. But she’s never not shown up before, so whatever you did this time…”
Her voice trailed off in an attempt for me to fill in the blank. But that wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t tell Gemma what happened when I still hadn’t fully wrapped my head around it.
Gemma’s lips pressed together firmly when I remained quiet. Her eyes pleaded a bit, but all I could do was shake my head apologetically, and she flicked her gaze down to her lap, giving up.
Fuck.
Gemma had been critiquing my relationship with Juni for years, but something about this time hit differently. Maybe because I realized how right she was. Maybe because the thought of anyone being hard on Juni, myself included, made my hands ball into fists. Juni didn’t deserve that. She deserved the world.
I wanted to give her the world. I wanted to give her the world so fucking bad, but I didn’t know how to juggle that and work and my relationship with Gems.
Although, right now, I was dropping every single ball anyway.
I stood, pulling out my phone. “I’ll text her.”
“You better,” Josie piped in this time. She was twirling one of her short curls around her finger while shooting me an icy look.
“Yeah, I was excited to see her,” Genevieve added, her small voice nearly cracking my heart.
“Fix it. She better be here at Christmas, Julian,” Gemma warned, pulling my attention back toward her again. “Or else.”
Disappointing my sisters was the last thing I wanted out of this mess, so I heaved a sigh and walked off toward the garage, finding solace in the cool air and the quiet. I stared at my phone, unsure where to even start.
After a few minutes, I decided to text what felt most natural. What felt most true.
We miss you.
DAISY: We?
My sisters. But mostly me.
DAISY: You saw me yesterday.
It isn’t the same.
DAISY: I thought you’d be happy. You finally get a holiday without having me around to annoy you.
Reading those words made me feel like punching something. My fingers shook as I texted her back.
I’m not happy, Juniper.
I could have said so much more. I owed her apologies on top of apologies, but that wasn’t a conversation to have over text. So I pivoted to the more important thing for tonight.
You should be here.
DAISY: I needed a little space.
Okay. I’m going to be in the garage for the next couple of hours, tweaking a few things on Noah’s bike. There’s a spot for you on the couch next to Gemma if you start feeling better.
I had a hunch that it wasn’t space from Gems that she needed.
Juniper belonged here, and I realized I had to overcome years of telling her she didn’t.
If I needed to leave to make her feel comfortable, then I would leave.
I’d do anything.
Juniper was trying to kill me.
Since destroying little bits of my heart wasn’t good enough, she was now attacking my dick. No surprise there. As if the first day back at work after a long weekend hadn’t been brutal enough on its own, Juni left about five minutes ago after finishing her last meeting of the day and came back wearing a short and flirty dress designed to tease the hell out of me.
I unashamedly stared at her.
To be honest, I’d been doing it all day. Although my sisters told me Juni had made an eventual appearance on Thanksgiving, I stuck to my word and stayed in the garage. Meaning I hadn’t seen her since last week, and now I was soaking up every little glimpse of her.
But this…this was too much. She seemed to have come back from our weekend in Whitebridge on a mission.
“What are you wearing?”
She didn’t give me her eyes when she replied. “What I’m wearing doesn’t concern you, Julian.”
“Maybe it doesn’t concern me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be concerned,” I grunted, wondering where the hell she planned to go in that.
“You wanted to just exist, Julian.” She slammed her laptop shut before looking up at me beneath her lashes. “Let me exist.”
I closed my eyes momentarily to get my shit together. This existing thing? I hated it. Didn’t she realize I hated it?
“Juni—”
“It’s a dress,” she cut me off before bending down to grab her purse from beneath her desk.
My cock stiffened to an unbearably painful degree.
Standing again, Juniper swiveled back around to flash a smirk in my direction. She knew exactly what she just fucking did to me. “Do you have a problem with it?”
“Not a problem, no,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “But there isn’t much of it.”
That was the mildest way I could think of reminding her that it would only take half a second for me to get beneath any fabric she put on her body.
She raised a brow. It was done mockingly, and somehow, that made it even hotter. “I thought you weren’t afraid of a little bare skin, Julian.”
“I’m not.” I stood, slamming the door to our office shut as I stepped toward her. If she noticed my obvious arousal, it didn’t register on her face, which was likely for the best. “Your skin, your lips, any little bit of you, I’m not afraid of any of it.”
Juniper leaned back against her desk slowly. Her back arched seductively as she drew her bottom lip between her teeth.
I closed the distance between us, not wanting this conversation to be overheard. “I fucking crave it,” I said in a low voice. “But I’m afraid of what it’ll do to me if I let it. What it will do to you. What it will do to the people around us.”
“Julian…”
She said my name like a warning, and I understood. My blood was running hot, and I needed to find a way to cool it. But Juni’s stare was equally bold and audacious. She was flashing warning signals while simultaneously daring me to continue.
“It’s not about me, Juniper,” I pleaded. “It’s not about what I want. You have to understand.”
“Oh, I understand. I know you, Julian.” She shrugged, pulling her hand away to create a void where her touch vanished. I watched as her shoulders deflated. “You’ve been pushing me away for years. It’s not like I’m not used to it.”
“Juniper, I—” My words cut off at her stony glare, and I knew anything I had to say would fall flat.
“You haven’t changed,” she muttered with a sigh. Disappointment was written all over her face.
“Yeah…I’m still the worst.” I stared back at her, sinking into that deep look in her eyes.
“Look who’s being self-deprecating now,” she breathed, but her lips twitched slightly in amusement.
“Well, it’s true.”
My mood dropped as I reminded myself that this was our reality. While I’d lusted after Juniper for years, she’d been thinking of me as the worst for many more. Why would she even think it would be a good idea to continue what we started the other night? Juni had made no indication that she wanted me in the way I wanted her. She seemed eager to start something physical, sure, but I doubted that would be enough for me. Once we started, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop.
“You’ve never liked me, Juni,” I reminded her softly, trying not to sound so goddamn sad about it but likely failing. “Remember? What happens when you realize that you still don’t?”
I’d avoided letting myself get close to her for all these years for a reason.
Those brilliant brown eyes blinked at me, almost like she was trying to remember. Then she abruptly sucked in as if it all came flooding back.
“I told you, Julian. I told you at Sofia’s wedding that I liked you. And then, if I remember correctly, you made me admit that nothing about that night was fake. So it wasn’t a lie. But you know what…it doesn’t even matter.” She looked down, pushing me away with her words, and I supposed I deserved that, even if it fucking hurt. “Not anymore.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No, I have a date I need to get to.”
I took a step back, feeling sucker punched with that information. “You have a date you need to get to,” I repeated.
Juniper looked down at herself thoughtfully. “You didn’t think I put this dress on for you, did you?”
I honestly hoped she had.
“Who did you put the dress on for, Juni?” I asked through gritted teeth, falling back into my desk chair like she’d pushed me. I spun around to face my computer. How could I keep staring at her when she was looking so perfect for someone else? But I waited, bated breath, for her to answer.
“Noah,” she said, her voice sweet. “He asked me to dinner tonight.”
Oh, fuck no.
I turned back around with such force that I had to plant my feet on the ground to stop the momentum of my chair.
“Excuse me…what?”
