“You’re in a remarkably good mood.” Clara cocked an amused eyebrow as I signed out from my shift. “Does the reason begin with a J and rhyme with rules?”
“Cannot confirm or deny,” I said, practically whistling.
Last week’s burglary aside, I’d had a damn good week. I’d put Michael behind me, Alex and I were on our way to being real friends again, and work had been relatively easy. For the ER, that meant no patient deaths and no mass casualty incidents, though there had been a nasty case involving an idiot with a blowtorch.
Plus, Jules’s bar exam was next week, which meant we could finally go on real dates again soon.
I already had our first post-bar date planned: a weekend trip to New York to see a special limited-time revival of Legally Blonde: The Musical, sandwiched between lots of good food and even more sex.
I’d have to trade shifts again to make the weekend happen, and it was expensive as hell on a resident’s salary, but Jules deserved it. Getting through the bar was a big deal.
“Fine. Don’t tell me, but I can guess.” Clara rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “One of these days, you’ll have to confirm your relationship, or the other nurses won’t stop hounding you about dating.”
“I’ll confirm after you admit your relationship with Tinsley is serious.” I smiled at her scowl. She’d been dating Tinsley for months and still refused to make it official. And people said I had commitment problems. “That’s what I thought.”
“Goodbye, Dr. Chen,” she said pointedly.
I laughed and waved before I left.
I’d scheduled drinks with Alex for tonight, but that wasn’t for another four hours. I had time for a shower and a quick nap, maybe a bit of New York research. I read about a dessert place there that reportedly served incredible salted caramel ice cream.
I typed in the security code when I arrived at my house and pushed the door open. One of the first things I did after the break-in was install a home security system. Alex recommended it, so I assumed it was good.
Well, it was the tenth one he recommended. The first nine were expensive as shit, but at least this one cracked his top ten.
I was already half asleep by the time I finished my shower, but the sound of the doorbell jolted me awake.
I threw on a pair of sweatpants and answered the door. Pleasant surprise filtered through me when I saw Jules standing on the front step.
“Hey, Red.” I greeted her with a cocky grin. “Can’t stay away from me, huh? Don’t blame you.” I gestured at myself. “Look at all this.”
I was still shirtless from the shower, and I didn’t want to brag or anything, but my abs were a fucking work of art.
“If I knew you had company, I would’ve waited,” she said dryly. She was carrying a large portfolio bag, which was strange, since she didn’t draw. Maybe she went shopping earlier. “Wouldn’t want to interrupt your weekly lovefest with your ego.”
“Daily,” I corrected. “Self-love is critical to maintaining one’s self-esteem. But you’re hot, so you’re allowed to interrupt.” I drew her inside and kicked the door closed behind us before planting a kiss on her lips. “Here for a study break?”
“Um, sort of.” Jules tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking unusually nervous.
“Well, don’t take too long of a break. As happy as I am to see you, I want you to kick ass on this exam.” Anticipation zipped down my spine. “I have a surprise for you after it’s over.”
“Can’t wait.”
I frowned at her subdued response. Normally, she’d be hounding me about what the surprise was until I caved. “You okay?”
“Yes. No. I mean, I have something to tell you.” She drew in a long breath without meeting my eyes. “It’s about the painting the burglar stole.”
“Okay…” I narrowed my eyes. “You’re not making me buy that painting we saw online the other day, are you? The one of the dogs playing poker? Because it’s cool and all, but there must be a thousand other people who own it.”
“No.” Her laugh sounded forced. “Actually, it’s a funny story. I have the painting. The one you’re missing.”
Confusion drew my brows together. “You found a print of it?”
“No.” Jules fiddled with her bag. “The real thing. The one stolen from your room.”
My smile slipped, and foreboding settled over my skin like a layer of frost. How the fuck did she get the painting when the police couldn’t even find a lead?
“What are you talking about?”
Instead of answering, Jules slowly unzipped the portfolio bag and withdrew the painting.
I stared at it blankly.
There it was, in all its brown and green glory. I’d never realized how condescending it was. The painting smirked at me, its taunt a singsong voice in my head.
I know something you don’t. And you’re not going to like it when you find out…
“That’s not all.” Jules’s voice shook so violently she sounded like a distorted version of herself.
My foreboding hardened into icy disbelief when she reached into her purse and retrieved three additional items.
My watch. My iPad. My rolled-up wad of emergency cash.
No.
She set them on the coffee table, the tremble in her hands matching the one in her voice.
No, no, no.
“Tell me you hunted down the thief and recovered those items.” I barely heard myself over the roar in my ears. “Tell me the burglar had a crisis of conscience and dropped those items on my porch when I was in the shower and you found them. Dammit, Jules, tell me something!”
Something other than the suspicion winding its way around my throat and choking off my air.
“I stole the items.” Jules’s confession hit me like a bullet in the chest. Pain pierced my flesh, making me flinch. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to do it. He was blackmailing me, and I didn’t know what else to do except go along with it, and I…”
Her rambled explanation faded as the roar grew louder. Her words ran together into a murky stream that painted the world in ugly grays and vicious reds.
She was the artist, and I was trapped in a surrealist nightmare of her making.
“Who?” I latched onto the last thing I remembered hearing.
My brain was sluggish, and it took more effort than usual to get the word out.
Jules wrapped her arms around her waist. “Max.”
Max. The guy I met at Hyacinth.
Liquid dark rage seeped through my veins and into my voice at the mention of that smug-faced fucker. “Start from the beginning.”
I listened, numb, as Jules explained everything more clearly this time—the jobs she pulled in Ohio, her relationship with Max, her sex tape, his blackmail, how she broke into my house and how she finally got rid of the video and recovered the painting.
When she finished, the ensuing silence was loud enough to deafen me.
“I’m sorry.” Jules swallowed. “I should’ve told you all this earlier, but I didn’t want to ruin what we had when we were just starting to get along. I wasn’t sure how you would react, and I thought…”
“You thought?”
“That if I told you about my past, it would confirm everything horrible you’d ever thought about me.” Her voice grew smaller with each word, like she was realizing how fucking stupid they were.
My rage pulsed harder. It leaked from my veins and spread into my chest, hollowing it out until nothing else remained.
Half of it was directed at Max for what he did to Jules.
The other half…
Breathe.
“I see.” No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t summon an ounce of warmth. My blood had iced into one solid, painful pool, and I was afraid any movement would crack it. Splinter it into a thousand icicles that would shred me open from the inside out. “So why are you telling me now?”
“I didn’t want to lie to you anymore. I never wanted to lie to you, but I…” Jules took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “I wanted us to have a fresh start. No more secrets or lies.”
“I see,” I repeated. The cold in my chest intensified. “I forgive you.”
She faltered, her face twisting with confusion at the contrast between my words and my chilly tone. “You do?”
“Yes.” I smiled. The movement felt strange, like I was contorting my mouth into a position it was no longer capable of. “Come here, Red.”
The nickname tasted bitter on my tongue.
After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped toward me.
Even with ashen skin and dark circles shadowing her eyes, she was the most beautiful, treacherous thing I’d ever seen.
I curled my hand around the back of her neck and rubbed a gentle thumb over her skin before I yanked her toward me and kissed her hard enough to draw a whimper of pain.
“That hurt?”
Jules shook her head, her muscles taut beneath my touch.
“Good.” I softened the kiss, soothing her lips with my tongue. “You shouldn’t have lied, Red,” I whispered. “You know I hate liars.”
I detected a soft tremble in her shoulders. “I know.”
“But you…” I dragged my mouth over the line of her jaw and down her neck. “You are so beautiful. So sweet beneath that prickly armor you wear. You know things about me no one else ever will.” I sank my teeth into the curve between her neck and shoulder. “How can I stay mad at you?”
Jules let out another whimper when my hand inched beneath her skirt and brushed over her pussy. For once, she wasn’t wet for me.
But we would change that.
I slipped my hand inside her underwear and caressed her until she flooded my fingers and her body melted into mine.
My movements were cold. Mechanical. I’d done them a million times, and I watched her mouth part in little moaning gasps with apathy.
My cock strained against my zipper, hard and angry. It was a physical reaction more than anything else, but it was the only part of me that still felt alive.
Jules was teetering on the edge of orgasm when I yanked my hand away.
“Get on your fucking knees.”
She jerked at my harsh tone, but after a second’s hesitation, she slowly sank to her knees without argument.
“Do you want this?” I tilted her chin up, forcing her eyes to meet mine. “Tell me if you don’t, Red. This is your last chance.”
Jules’s throat bobbed with a swallow. “I want this.”
I released her chin and tugged her head back with one hand while freeing my cock with the other. “Tap my thigh if you want me to stop.”
That was the only warning I gave her before I shoved myself down her throat. She gagged at the brutal invasion, her eyes welling with tears, but her hands remained planted in her lap.
I gripped her hair with both hands and fucked her mouth, deeper and deeper until the obscene sound of my balls slapping against her chin mixed with her choked gurgling.
My jaw clenched as I stared down at her. The sight of her kneeling before me, tears and mascara running down her cheeks while she choked on my cock, sent an irrational wave of fury through me.
I closed my eyes and tipped my head back. That turned out to be a mistake, because the minute I did, unwanted memories banged through my brain.
Vermont. The clinic. Hyacinth. The picnic. Ohio.
Every puzzle piece that shaped our relationship into what it was now, tainted.
It wasn’t about the size of Jules’s lies. I didn’t give two fucks about a stupid painting and some gadgets. It was about trust.
All I’d ever wanted was honesty, and all I’d ever gotten was deception.
Tension knifed through my gut.
I opened my eyes and yanked my cock out of Jules’s mouth. Sweat coated my skin, and my heart drummed a painful rhythm in my chest.
She was a mess—hair tousled, mouth swollen, cheeks streaked with tears. She stared up at me, those huge hazel eyes saying words I didn’t want to hear.
“Get on all fours.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at her, but even when I fucked her from behind, images of her seared through my brain.
The glint of her hair in the sunlight. The fire that sparked in her eyes when she insulted me. The softness of her palm against mine and the way her mouth tilted up just a fraction higher on the right when she smiled.
Pressure suffocated my chest.
Jules was close to coming. I could hear it in the way she breathed and feel it in the way she squeezed around me.
It was funny how sometimes, I was attuned to her every movement, and other times, I didn’t know her at all.
I leaned down until my mouth hovered next to her ear. “Remember when I said I forgive you?” I reached around to pinch her clit. “I lied.”
Jules’s orgasm hit her at the same time my words did. She gasped out a half sob, half moan while I came right after her.
The empty release did nothing to ease the pressure behind my ribcage.
I disentangled myself from her and stood. She slumped forward on the ground, her dress bunched around her waist, her shoulders shaking with soft cries.
“How does it feel to be lied to, Jules?” The raw, angry words sounded like they came from someone else. Someone crueler than I ever thought I could be. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?”
The ice in my veins had melted. I was drowning from the inside out, and part of me wanted to give in, sink beneath the surface, and never come back up.
Michael. Alex. Jules.
Three of the people I trusted most all stabbed me in the back. Michael and Alex’s betrayals hurt, but Jules…she knew how fucked up I was from what happened with the others.
Intellectually, I understood her reasoning for not telling me earlier. Emotionally, I couldn’t stop the hurt from poisoning every memory of us.
Careful, Red. Keep saying things like that, and I might never let you go.
You’re one of the few people I trust…even when we couldn’t stand each other, I could always count on you to be honest with me.
Heat blazed across my cheeks.
I was a fucking idiot.
Jules pushed herself off the ground and faced me. Giant blotches of red bloomed across her face and neck. She’d stopped crying, but her breaths sounded abnormally loud and shallow in the silence.
“It seems only fitting for us to end things with a goodbye fuck.” A cruel smile slashed across my mouth. The unyielding pressure had crawled up my throat, and it took twice as much effort to get my words out. “At least you got an orgasm out of it, so don’t say I never gave you anything. I’ll miss that tight pussy of yours though. No one takes my cock better than you do. It’s your best quality.”
Vicious hurt slashed across her face and speared me in the chest like a hot poker.
The only person I hated more than her in that moment was myself.
“What I did was wrong, and I’m sorry.” Her small voice contained the barest hint of her usual fire. “But you’re being cruel.”
“Am I?” I mocked. “Well, I’m fucking sorry. As you can see, being a nice guy hasn’t served me all that well in the past.” My eyes burned.
Looking at her hurt. Hearing her hurt. Everything hurt.
“You could’ve fucking told me, Jules. Did you really think so little of me that you thought I’d judge you for things you were manipulated into doing? That I wouldn’t have been on your side and took that fucker down with you? I understand why you didn’t tell me the truth at Hyacinth, but after Ohio…” My jaw clenched. “That’s what fucking hurts the most. That I considered you worthy of trust but you didn’t think the same of me.”
Jules’s chin wobbled. She pressed a fist to her mouth, her eyes glistening in the dim light.
“If you’d asked for the painting, I would’ve given it to you.” My voice cracked. “I would’ve given you anything you wanted.”
A sharp sob bled through her fist, followed by another, and another, until her gasping breaths soaked every molecule of air.
I watched, unmoving, as she hyperventilated, but my muscles strained with the effort to hold still.
I loathed the part of me that still wanted to comfort her. It was the part with no self-preservation, that needed her so much it would willingly hand her the knife to stab me in the chest just so she could be the last thing I saw before I died.
She was right. I was a masochist.
“Get out.”
Jules flinched at my quiet command. “Josh, please. I swear I didn’t—”
“Get. Out.”
“I lo—”
“Don’t you dare say it.” My pulse spiked with another burst of adrenaline. Breathe. Just fucking breathe. “I said, get out, Jules. Get the fuck out!”
She finally moved, her soft sobs growing fainter as she stumbled toward the door. It closed behind her, and then…silence.
The tension holding me upright collapsed.
I doubled over, hands on my knees, silent shudders wracking my body. The pressure inside me strangled every vital organ, but no matter how much it built and built, it refused to explode. It just sat there, suffocating me from the inside out.
Jules was gone, but I still felt her. She was everywhere—in every inch of the room, every fragment of my thoughts, every beat of my heart.
The visceral urge to destroy everything that reminded me of her propelled me off the couch and into my room. I rifled through my desk drawer for the Legally Blonde musical tickets and tore them into shreds, taking perverse satisfaction in the confetti of destroyed paper fluttering into my trash can.
Next went the shirt I let her borrow the first night she slept over; the receipt from Giorgio’s, which I’d kept as a stupid secret memento of our first date, and the pillow with her scent lingering on it. Every little thing that contained even the sparsest memory of us, destroyed and tossed.
By the time I finished, my room looked like how I felt: empty and hollow.
Unable to stand the sight of the stripped room, I walked to the kitchen and grabbed the nearest bottle of whiskey.
I would’ve been concerned about how much I’d been drinking lately if I gave a shit about anything except drowning out Jules’s lingering presence. It wasn’t like I was fucking blacking out every night.
I didn’t bother pouring the whiskey in a glass; I tipped my head back and chugged straight from the bottle.
I don’t know how much I drank, nor did I care.
I just drank and drank until I sank into the darkness of oblivion and thoughts of Jules finally faded from my mind.
Why did she say that