“This again.” He shakes his head. “I thought you guys made up?”
“We did,” I say. “That was until my mom decided to pin the blame for your fistfight on me.”
“Wait,what?”
“What’s going on?” Andrew comes in with my medicine and a water bottle. When I level a glare at him, he takes a step back from the door. “Oh shit. You talked to Mom. I meant to tell you about that—”
“You really buried the lede on that reconciliation call, didn’t you?”
“I’ll fix this, okay?” he says. “I’m not bullshitting you. I will.”
I’m far too exhausted to threaten him into honoring his word. He scurries away, and Julian shuts the door and makes a grab for the prescription.
“Thanks.” I watch as he tears through the packaging and deposits a single pill from the bottle into my left hand and opens the cap of the water bottle. Once I wash the pill down, I give him a thumbs-up. “All done.”
“Want some help changing into your pajamas?” he asks, then pushes when I shake my head. “You’re wearing work clothes. They can’t be comfortable to sleep in. Come on, get up.”
I don’t fight when he grabs my good hand and lifts me from my slanted position on the bed to a full stand. Not that I’m willing to admit it, especially when he’s still mad at me—I can tell in the way his jaw locks and how he’s unable to hold eye contact for longer than five seconds—but I like the way he takes care of me.
“Can we please have this fight so we can get it over with?” I ask as he helps me into a pair of pajama bottoms. If he thinks this is a weird question to ask when he’s face-to-face with my strawberry-print underwear, he doesn’t say. In fact, his expression gives nothing away as he pulls the shorts up my body. “Julian—”
“We don’t have to get into this now,” he says. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk about this later.”
“We talked plenty when you had a concussion,” I remind him. “You’re mad at me. I should’ve called you, and I didn’t.”
“You think that’s why I’m mad?” He rises to his feet, and though we’re close enough in height it feels as if he’s towering over me. “You should’ve calledsomeone, Leticia, even if it wasn’t me. Do you have any idea how terrifying it was to find out you were sitting in a hospital room? Or to imagine you hurting, all alone, inside a building five feet from me and I was fucking clueless to it?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Julian. Probably very similar to how I felt when I found out you fought my brother and hurt your head while you were just downstairs from me,” I counter. “But I didn’t yell at you for it.”
“That was a completely different situation.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t know where we stood with each other. I had no idea how you felt about me, or if you’d even care—”
“What do you mean,if I’d even care?” I scoff at him. “Of course I care! I wanted to throttle Andrew with my bare hands when I heard what he did to you! Did you think I was that fucking heartless? That I wouldn’t come running to see with my own two eyes that you were okay?”
“I didn’t know how you felt about me,” he says through gritted teeth. “And I still don’t.”
“What?”
“I’m well aware of what I said yesterday,” he says. “It slipped out at the worst time possible, but it’s out there. You know. You know, and I don’t.”
“Julian, you know how I feel about you. We would not be together if you didn’t know. I wouldn’t have let you call yourself my boyfriend if you didn’t know.” Even when he was trying to hold back his temper, my heart fluttered when I heard that word from him. Like, actuallyfluttered. I’m so lost over this man, I’m sickening to even myself.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve never said it aloud and I have.” His arms slap at his sides. “Not that you need to say you love me if you don’t mean it. I want you to mean it when you say it, and that’s not even what I’m really talking about. I just…I needsomethinghere. You’re pulling away from me, Leticia. All week, you’ve been pulling away from me and I need to know that I’m not about to lose you.”
He kisses me before I can tell him it’s not true, and I desperately want to, but he needs this more. It’s a lot like our second kiss, hard and angry and bruising. I clutch at his chest with my good hand, balling my fist in the fabric as I pull him closer. He pours his pain into me, and it lands with a crushing weight on my chest. I only pullaway when I feel wetness against my cheeks and am alarmed to find the source of it falling from Julian’s eyes.
“Julian.”
He lets out a shuddering breath that breaks my heart as I wipe the tears from one side of his face with my thumb, the sight inexplicably making my own eyes sting all over again.
“My sunshine boy. Please, don’t cry. You’re not losing me. I promise.”
“You swear?”
“I do,” I say. “I’m sorry for pulling away from you. I never meant to hurt you. I did it becauseIwas hurting. I mean, fuck, you gave me the most impossible task of a lifetime. Or so I thought.”
“In my head, it was never your task,” he says. “It was mine.”
“Meddler.” He chuckles against my lips. “It was always my task. Mine and Andrew’s. But you played a good part, I’ll give you that. He only called me because you told him to.”
