Forty-five minutes and dozens of questions later, the cops finally let us go.
Beanie had been taken into custody, and Jules and I walked in silence toward the metro station on the next street. Most people would freak out after being the victim of a mugging attempt, but she acted like she’d just finished grocery shopping.
I was less serene. Not only had I wasted an hour being grilled by the police, but I’d also missed the rest of the game.
“Tell me why every time I run into trouble, you’re involved,” I said through gritted teeth as the metro came into view.
“It’s not my fault you chose to walk down that street and you chose to stay for a merry interlude instead of going on your way,” Jules retorted. “I had it handled.”
I snorted, my shoes pounding a furious rhythm on the steps. I could’ve taken the escalator, but I needed to work off my aggravation. Jules must’ve felt the same way, because she was right there next to me, pissing me off.
“Merry interlude? Who talks like that? And there was nothing merry about it, I promise.” I reached the turnstiles and yanked out my wallet. “Too bad the police didn’t take you into custody too. You’re a menace to society.”
“According to who? You?” She looked me over with disdain.
“Yes.” I gave her a cold smile. “Me and every person who’s had the misfortune of running into you.”
It was a horrible thing to say, but between the letters, a long shift at the hospital, and my general existential crisis, I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable.
“God, you. Are,” Jules slammed her metro card on the reader with unnecessary force, “The. Worst.”
I passed through the turnstile behind her. “No, that would be your sense of self-preservation. It’s common sense to give muggers what they want.” The more I thought about it, the more her actions baffled and infuriated me. “What if you couldn’t disarm him? What if he had another weapon you didn’t know about? You could’ve fucking died!”
Jules’s face flushed. “Stop yelling at me. You’re not my father.”
“I’m not yelling!”
We stopped beneath the schedule board announcing the arrival of the next train in eight minutes. The station was empty save for a couple making out on one of the benches and a suited business type at the far end of the platform, and it was quiet enough for me to hear the furious rush of blood in my ears.
We glared at each other, our chests heaving with emotion. I wanted to shake her for being so stupid as to put her life in danger over a fucking phone and wallet.
Just because I didn’t like her didn’t mean I wanted her dead.
Not all the time, anyway.
I expected another snarky retort, but Jules turned away and lapsed into silence.
It was completely out of character and goddamn unnerving. I couldn’t remember the last time she let me have the last word.
I exhaled sharply through my nose, forcing myself to calm down and think clearly about the situation.
No matter how I felt about her, Jules was Ava’s friend, and she’d just survived an armed mugging attempt. Unless she was a damn robot, she couldn’t be as unaffected by what happened as she appeared.
I examined her out of the corner of my eye, taking in her tight jaw and ramrod-straight back. Her expression was blank—a little too much so.
My anger cooled, and I rubbed a hand over my jaw, torn. Jules and I didn’t comfort each other. We didn’t so much as say bless you when the other sneezed. But…
Dammit.
“You okay?” I asked gruffly. I couldn’t not check on someone after they almost died, no matter who they were. It went against everything I believed in as a doctor and a human being.
“I’m fine.” Jules tucked her hair behind her ear, her voice flat, but I detected a slight shake in her hand.
Adrenaline rushes were crazy things. They made you stronger, more focused. They made you feel invincible. But once the high disappeared and you crashed back to earth, you had to deal with the aftermath—the shaky hands, the weak legs, the worries you’d staved off for a brief moment in time only to all come rushing back in one giant flood.
I would bet my last dollar Jules was in the midst of a post-rush crash.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. I got the gun away from him before he could do anything.” Jules stared straight ahead, so intense I half-expected her to burn a hole in the station wall.
“Didn’t realize you were a secret super soldier.” I attempted to lighten the air, though I was curious as hell as to what happened. We’d talked to the police separately, so I hadn’t heard her recount how she’d disarmed Beanie.
“You don’t have to be a super soldier to disarm someone.” She wrinkled her nose. Finally. A sign of normality. “I took self-defense classes when I was younger. They included learning how to handle a mugger.”
Huh. I wouldn’t have figured her for someone who took self-defense classes.
The train pulled into the station before I could respond. There were no empty seats since the stop before this one was a popular hub, so we stood shoulder-to-shoulder near the doors until we reached Hazelburg, the Maryland suburb that housed Thayer’s campus.
Jules and I used to be next door neighbors when she and Ava lived together their senior year, but Ava had since moved to the city and I’d rented a new place. There were too many unwanted memories in my old house.
Still, Hazelburg was a small town, and my and Jules’s houses were only a twenty-minute walk from each other.
We unconsciously fell into step beside each other after exiting the station.
“Don’t tell Ava or anyone else what happened,” Jules said when we reached the corner where we had to split—her to the left, me to the right. “I don’t want them to worry.”
“I won’t.” She was right. Ava would worry, and there was no point in getting her worked up over something that had already happened. “You sure you’re okay?”
I almost offered to walk Jules home, but that might be too much. We’d reached our limits of civility with each other, as evidenced by the next words out of her mouth.
“Yes.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger over the opposite sleeve of her coat, her expression distracted. “Don’t be late to Ava’s party on Saturday. I realize punctuality is not one of your few virtues, but it’s important you’re on time.”
My sympathy evaporated in a gust of annoyance. “I won’t be late,” I said through clenched teeth. “Don’t worry about me.”
I walked away before she could respond, not bothering to say goodbye. Jules had to ruin it every. Single. Fucking. Time.
Maybe her prickliness was a defense mechanism, but that was none of my business. I wasn’t here to peel back her layers like we were in one of those damned romance novels Ava liked so much.
If Jules wanted to be insufferable, I had every right to save myself from suffering by removing myself from her presence.
The wind nipped at my face and howled through the trees, underscoring how quiet the streets were. Hazelberg was one of the safest towns in the U.S. but…
The way Jules’s hand shook while we were waiting for the metro. The tension in her shoulders. The paleness of her skin.
My brisk walk slowed to a meander.
You’re reading too much into one movement. Just go home, man.
So what if it was dark and she was alone? The chances of anything happening to her were slim, even if she was a magnet for trouble.
I closed my eyes, unable to believe I was even contemplating doing what I was about to do.
“God motherfucking dammit.” I bit out the words before I stopped and double backed in the direction Jules had gone in. I set my jaw, growing angrier with each step.
Angry at my conscience, which reared its head at the worst times. Angry at Jules, for existing; at Ava, for being friends with her, and at Thayer’s housing coordinator, for placing them in the same room and therefore making their friendship an inevitability all those years ago.
Fate liked to screw with me, and it’d never screwed me over harder than when it’d introduced a certain redhead into my life.
It didn’t take me long to catch up with Jules. I stayed far enough behind her so she wouldn’t notice me but close enough I could see her. The bright colors of her hair and coat made it easy, even in the dark.
I felt like a total creep, but if she saw me following her, we’d get into another argument, and I was too tired for that shit.
Luckily, we arrived at her house in less than ten minutes, and I relaxed when I saw the glow of lights behind the curtains. Stella, another college friend of Ava’s and Jules’s roommate, must be home already.
Jules walked onto the porch, reached into her bag…and paused.
I tensed again and edged behind a tree on the opposite sidewalk in case she turned around, but she didn’t. She just stood there, frozen, for a full minute.
What the hell was she doing?
I was about to cross the street in case she was in shock or something when she finally moved again. She took the keys out of her bag, unlocked the door, and disappeared inside.
I released my breath in one long, slow sigh. It formed a tiny white puff in the wintry air, and I waited another minute, my eyes lingering on the spot where Jules had stood, before I turned and walked home.
