She didn’t answer my text.
I watched her house until her dad finally left, climbing into his SUV he had parked on the street and driving off. I immediately called her, but she didn’t answer.
I didn’t give myself time to debate whether it was a good idea or not before I was bolting out our front door and across the street to hers. I lifted my fist to knock, but the door opened before I could.
Julep was a wreck.
Her hair was matted and tangled, her eyes puffy and red and swollen. She sniffed, wiping the back of her nose with her wrist.
The sight broke my fucking heart.
“Come here,” I said, and then I pulled her into me as she started to cry again.
I held her there in the open doorway while she shook and clung to my hoodie like a lifeline. The last bit of good sense I had holding on urged me to scoot us inside and close the door, and once I had, I pulled back and framed her arms with my hands.
“He lost it, didn’t he?”
“DEFCON level one meltdown.”
“With me, too,” I said, and then I sighed, wiping her tears with my thumbs. “Come on, let me make us some tea.”
Julep let me slide my arm around the small of her back and guide her to the kitchen. She slid into a barstool at the small island while I opened cabinets until I found a box of herbal tea. I filled her electric kettle next, and once it was on to boil, I leaned a hip against the counter and turned back to her.
“He just doesn’t know us,” I said. “He doesn’t understand. Once we get him to see that we’re good for each other, he’ll re-evaluate.”
Julep didn’t look convinced.
She stared at a dark spot on the counter, not blinking.
It was too quiet, even as the water began to bubble and boil. I turned it off once it was ready, placing tea bags in two mugs and pouring the water over them. I handed one to Julep and kept one on the other side with me.
“Give it a few minutes to steep,” I said.
Julep wrapped her hands around the mug and nodded.
I had already been thinking of what we could do, trying to come up with a plan while he’d been over here with her. I saw it the same way I saw planting and tending to a new vegetable or flower. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I also knew nothing was impossible.
“I think we should invite him to dinner,” I finally said. “Maybe next weekend, with my uncles. Nathan can cook a big meal. He’ll see I’m from a good family, that I’m not just some punk trying to get in his daughter’s pants.”
“And find out I’ve already met your uncles behind his back?” Julep shook her head. “He’d feel duped.”
“Well, I’ll ask them to pretend like it’s their first time meeting you.”
“You’ll ask them to lie?”
“It’s not like that.”
“It is.”
“My uncles won’t care. They won’t see it like that,” I said. “They adore you, and they’ll want to help.”
Julep was silent.
I blew on my tea, dunking the bag a few times. “We don’t have to move so soon, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Let’s give him some time to cool off.”
“Holden—”
“Trust me, I know he’s pissed,” I said, a flash of his red face popping into the back of my mind. “But he was just caught off guard. We all were. Emotions are high.”
“I think we should call things off.”
I stilled, hand hovering with the string of the tea bag between my fingers as my eyes crawled up to meet hers. When I saw she was serious, panic seized my chest.
“We need to call it, Holden.”
She looked impossibly tired.
“Call it,” I echoed, not as a question but as a repetition to make sure I’d heard correctly. “I don’t want to call it. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not. But we don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not this time, there isn’t.”
My heart thumped so loudly in my ears I could barely hear my own voice over it. “We’ll figure it out. Maybe not tonight, but we will.”
“There’s nothing to figure out. I mean… maybe…” She chewed her bottom lip. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
My ears started ringing then. “Don’t say that,” I whispered.
Her face warped a little, but she looked down at her hands, doing her best to control the emotion threatening to take her under. “You’re going into the NFL. What do we really expect to happen?”
“Julep, don’t.”
“It was nice, we had fun, but—”
I rounded the island and turned her in her barstool until she was facing me, my hands braced on either side of where she sat. I leaned down, waiting until her eyes met mine.
“Nice? It was nice?”
She tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t let her.
“Do not do this,” I begged her, my jaw set, nostrils flaring. “Do not push me away.”
“I don’t see any other way.”
“I do.”
“I know what he threatened you with,” she whispered, her eyes glossing.
I clamped my mouth shut, willing myself to breathe.
“He’s not bluffing,” she continued, her voice soft and resigned. “He will bench you. He will play Russo. You will lose everything that you’ve worked your entire life for.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, that’s part of the issue, then,” she snapped back, and she shoved my arm out of her way before standing and crossing the living room, her back to me as she folded her arms.
I stood rooted in place, trying to calm myself, to think clearly and not panic.
I was failing.
“Look, we had something real, Holden,” she said, using her thumb to wipe one loan tear. “And I care about you. But that’s exactly why we have to stop. You have a future that you dreamed of long before you even knew I existed. I don’t want to ruin that for you.”
“You’re not ruining it. You’re making it better.”
Her little shoulders collapsed, and I wanted so badly to pull her into me, to hold her and force her to see things my way. But when I took a step toward her, she took a step back.
“It’s not just you who has something to lose, okay?” She sniffed. “He threatened to send me to rehab.”
My jaw tightened. “He what?”
“He won’t,” she said quickly. “He didn’t mean it. I know he didn’t mean it. But he said it because that’s how scared he is. That’s how much I have fucked him up with my actions over the last five years.”
“But that’s just it. You’ve turned a corner. He knows it, he said as much to me,” I said, and this time when I moved toward her, she didn’t back away. “We just have to get him to see that part of the reason is because we are good together.”
“It’s not that simple.”
I let out a long exhale, framing her arms with my hands. “Just trust me. Trust that I can make this right.”
Her eyes welled with tears again, and this time she let them fall freely as she swallowed. “I need some space.”
“Julep—”
“I need some space,” she said again, pleading. “And you need to focus on the game.”
“I don’t want to focus on the game.”
“Again, that’s part of the problem,” she said, exasperated.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to bang my fists against the wall and tell her not to do this, not to push me away when I was trying so desperately to hold onto her. But it seemed the tighter I held, the more she resisted being held.
“The Holden I know would only be focused on the game, on winning the championship with his team and securing his spot in the draft. That’s the man I met at the beginning of the season. That’s the man I fell for. The one who was determined, who was a leader, who would never risk any of it for some girl.”
“You’re not just some girl and you fucking know it.”
Her bottom lip quivered, and she looked away from me.
“I’m still that guy,” I continued. “I am. I want the win. I want all of it. But I don’t want to lose you in the process.”
She quieted, fighting back more tears. “I don’t see any other way.”
I shook my head, eyes stinging, heart thrashing.
“Please,” she begged. “I want you to leave. I need you to leave.”
I was so fucking angry and desperate I felt like a mad man on the edge. But I could sense how precarious the situation was, how if I kept on in this moment, I’d only push her away. She was freaked out. She was scared. And I was making it worse by trying to rip away one last little bit of control she felt like she held onto.
I pulled her closer, tilting her chin until she looked at me.
“I will give you anything you need, Julep. Even this. But only on one condition. You have to promise me we will talk after you’ve taken some time, some space. You have to promise me that this isn’t the end.”
She swallowed, her glossy eyes flicking between mine.
“I am not walking away from you,” I told her as my voice shook. “Do you understand me? I am not walking away.”
I silenced the cry that came from her lips with a pained kiss, one she met just as desperately, her arms threading around the back of my neck and holding me to her. I kissed her long and deep, holding her tightly against me, praying with every bit of religion I still held onto that she believed me when I said that.
“Okay,” she breathed, pulling away, her forehead pressed to mine.
“You promise?”
She nodded, and I pulled her back in, both of us trembling as I pressed my lips to hers.
Then, just like she asked, I left.
And even though she promised, my heart was swallowed by the black hole of grief when I shut the door behind me.
As if I’d never kiss her again.
