Since He Really Feels (He Feels) (26 page)

“Bree,” I had said, “I’m marrying Julianne. I’m sorry, but this,” I motioned between us, “is not going to happen.
Ever.”

She had looked wounded, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting home, getting our overnight stuff, and finding Julianne.

I had already planned a night away with her before any of the Bree stuff happened. I knew that we needed a night away together, and as soon as Julianne told me she was going to Mahogany, I felt compelled to recreate some of the magic that had originally brought us together.

But as I drove my cock in and out of my fiancée, none of it mattered. Bree faded away. Work faded away. My family issues faded away.

All that mattered was the two of us in that moment. The only thing I could think of was how Julianne had become everything to me, and I wasn’t ever going to let her go.

With that thought, I lost control just as she tightened around me. I shuddered and groaned out her beautiful name as she drained every last drop from me.

I collapsed over her, my cheek against her breast as my body stayed connected to hers. Pulling out meant disconnecting from the intimacy, and I didn’t want to do that. Maybe it was overly sentimental, but I loved the feeling of being inside of her. I loved when she held me against her body, her fingers playing sweetly and innocently in my hair after the wicked and abandoned moments we had just shared.

I knew it was time to stop hiding so much shit from her, but I didn’t even know where to begin at that point.

The room was quiet around us after our moans had filled the air only moments before. I sighed contentedly, relishing the contact with this wonderful woman beneath me, and then, reluctantly, I pulled out. I kissed the side of her breast and then settled in beside her, holding her back against my front as she curled into my arms.

I thought about all of the secrets I’d been keeping, most notably the one about Jack Miller. I wanted to start my own business, and all I could think about was how I wanted Julianne to be my partner in that. I didn’t want
Bree or anybody else coming between us anymore. I only wanted to hire people who I trusted wholeheartedly. I didn’t want coworkers who came highly recommended because of nepotism, like Bree. She was Alex Brennan’s niece, and he had insisted that I gave her a place on my team despite my reluctance.

I finally broke the silence in the room. “We need to talk,” I whispered.

“I know,” she whispered back. “Can I go first?”

I wondered what it was that she wanted to talk about, and I suddenly felt a ripple of fear shoot through me. I wasn’t sure why; I was normally a confident, self-assured man, but something about the way we had just made love almost made me feel like she was starting her goodbye.

But I wasn’t going to allow it.

“Of course,” I said, my voice automatically guarded.

She didn’t turn to look at me, and that same ripple of fear shot through me again as I felt my heart rate pick up.

“I love you, Nick. I love you so, so much,” she started, fingering my hands that had suddenly tightened around her.

“I love you, too, baby,” I murmured.

“Our time apart lately has shown me something important.”

Fuck. I wanted to interrupt her. I wanted to yell. I was certain that she was going to tell me that our time apart showed her that she didn’t need me, and the thought alone crushed my heart into dust.

Where were these insecure thoughts coming from? It wasn’t like me, but I knew I’d done wrong by her. I’d kept far too many secrets from the woman I was going to marry, and all of that shit was finally catching up with me.

But I didn’t voice any of my fears. Instead, I let her speak.

“It has shown me how much I love you. How much I need you. I miss the days when it was just you and
me at McMillan and falling in love with you was all that mattered. Ever since that stupid night when you broke up with me, it seems like at every turn there’s another obstacle in our path, but I’m done letting stupid shit come between us, Nick.”

Thank God.

I felt all of the fear leave my body, and then I kissed her behind her ear. She turned in my arms to look up at me, and I saw tears brimming in her eyes. My eyes were drawn to her beautiful lips, and I leaned down toward them. My lips hovered over hers. “I’m done, too, baby. You and me until the end.”

“Until the end,” she echoed, and then my lips whispered across hers. She pulled my head down to plant her mouth more firmly against mine, and then I felt her tongue sweep through my mouth.

God, I loved this woman. Nothing would ever change that.

She pulled back first. “What did you want to talk about?” she asked.

She was facing me, her head resting on my bicep as she cuddled into my chest. I pressed my lips to her forehead.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” I started. She leaned back and looked up at me, alarm written in her eyes.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Don’t be scared,” I said, pulling her back into the comfortable place she’d been resting in only seconds before. “There’s just been a lot happening, and I don’t want to keep things from you anymore.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, and then I sighed. “I just don’t want secrets between us.”

“Is this because of Bree?” she asked, her voice quiet.

Was it? That was a great question. Maybe it was. Maybe if I’d let Julianne in on everything from the start, she’d have been there at the office with me that night and Bree never would’ve kissed me.
Or maybe not.

I shrugged. “Does it matter?”

She was quiet.

“What do you want to hear first?” I asked.

“What are my options?”

“My mother or BKG.”

“Whatever you want to tell me,” she whispered.

“I’ll start with my mother, then,” I said. I took a deep breath and realized that it was a shaky, shuddering breath. I didn’t fully understand why this was so hard for me to talk about, but it was.

“You know a lot about her already,” I started. “But what you don’t know is what she did that was completely unforgivable.”

I paused, figuring out how exactly to frame what I was about to say. And then I just blurted it out. “When I was very young, shortly after my brother was born, my mother had an affair.”

Julianne’s hand came up to my face, and she absently stroked my cheek. “Oh, Nick. I’m so sorry.”

I turned on my back. It was too hard to tell this story while someone was staring at me, so I looked up at the ceiling before I continued talking. Her head rested on my shoulder, and my arm wrapped around her. She absently touched my chest, drawing circles with her fingers while I spoke. “The details are fuzzy. I was only four at the time, and I honestly don’t remember. I just remember spending a lot of time with my father. I didn’t find out about any of this until about ten years ago.”

“Why ten years ago?”

“The affair produced a child. My half sister showed up on my doorstep on her eighteenth birthday.”

“What?” she asked, shock evident in her voice.

“I’d been shocked, too, when I met her. Apparently my mother had lived two lives my entire
life, and everything felt like a total lie.”

“Where’s your sister now?”

“One, I don’t consider her my sister. And two, I have no idea.”

I felt her gazing up at me, her eyes burning me, but I refused to look away from my spot on the ceiling. I didn’t want someone to try to convince me to give family a chance. Maybe that’s what made this so difficult to talk about. I didn’t want anything to do with my half sister. As far as I was concerned, she didn’t exist. Josh was my only sibling, and he felt the same way
.

“Aren’t you curious?” she asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not. My mother slept with another man behind my dad’s back. She got pregnant with another man’s child, had the baby, and managed to keep two completely separate families when we were children. And then my dad died, and my mom wasn’t there for us. Maybe we reminded her of our dad too much. But to me, that was total bullshit. She’d cheated on him and had a kid with another man while he was still alive.”

I’d never told anybody that story, and oddly, the crushing weight of the family drama I’d carried with me since the day
Alexa had shown up on my doorstep seemed a little lighter.

“What happened when you met your sister?” she asked, her finger smoothing over my eyebrow in a repeated motion. I wasn’t sure if it was to get me to turn to look at her or if she just felt the need to touch me, but it was somehow comforting. I continued staring up at the ceiling, not sure what sort of emotional dam would break if I had to look someone in the eyes while I shared the rest of my story.

“She tracked me down and knocked on my door one day. She told me she was my sister. For some reason, my mother had told her about Josh and me, but she hadn’t told Josh and me about Alexa. So she introduced herself, told me how close she was with dear old Mom, and told me she wanted to build a relationship with me. I was still young. I figured anybody who came into my life unexpectedly came in because they wanted something from me. In this case, I figured she, like my mother, was after my trust fund.”

“So you blew her off?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Completely. But she didn’t give up. It wasn’t until I confronted my mother with the information that she finally stopped.”

“What did you
r mom say?”

“She tried to deny it at first, but eventually she broke down and told me.”

Her fingers stopped playing with my eyebrow and came to a rest on my chest, right over my heart. “So then what happened? Did you ever give your sister a chance?”

“I don’t consider her my sister.”

She sighed. “You should.”

This was why I hadn’t wanted to tell anybody. I didn’t need someone else’s opinion on how to run my life, especially when it came to my family drama. But Julianne came first in my life now, and I needed to make sure that she knew that. If she had a good reason why she felt that way, I had to at least hear her out, even if I didn’t agree with what she had to say. “Why?”

“Because it’s not her fault that your mom made a mistake. I don’t know what I’d do without my sister, Nick.” Her voice was quiet and trembled a little at the end of her sentence.

“I don’t know what I’d do without Josh, either. And that’s enough for me.”

She was quiet for a few moments, taking in what I’d said. And then she asked a question that I hadn’t expected. “Would it be okay if I met her?”

I finally broke my staring contest with the ceiling. I sat up and leaned against the headboard, my arms no longer around Julianne. She sat up and faced me.

“Why?” I finally asked.

“Because she’s going to be my family, too.
She’s going to be my half sister-in-law.”

“‘In-law’ the operative phrase.
She’s only my half sister because of my mother’s mistake, and the three times I’ve seen Alexa, all I could think about was how my mother betrayed my father.”

“Don’t you think it’s kind of sad that you look at one of your siblings as a mistake? How would you feel if it was reversed
? If you wanted to build a relationship with your sister but she just brushed you off?”

I shrugged. I never did think that it was sad, but maybe she had a point. I’d spent the last ten years punishing
Alexa for something that wasn’t her fault, and I never even gave her a chance. Josh had tried to convince me at one point that we should get to know her, but I was firm in my resolve, and I made sure Josh had seen things my way. Maybe that stubborn streak in me was doing more damage than I thought.

“Just think about it.
For me.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, because I would do anything for Julianne, which I was about to prove when I made my next big confession. 

“That’s all I’m asking.”

“Ready for information overload part two?” I asked, needing to change the subject from my family.

“BKG?”

I nodded.

“What’s going on? Is this about why you’ve been working so late?”

“Sort of.”
I stood up and pulled her up with me. We stood naked together as she wrapped her arms around me. I motioned to the overnight bags I had dropped off earlier. “Let’s put on some clothes and sit outside and enjoy the night.”

She groaned. “Do we have to stop being naked?” she asked as her hands palmed against my shoulder blades and she buried her face in my chest.

“Not if you don’t want to,” I whispered, but somehow telling my fiancée that we were both about to lose our jobs seemed like news that should be delivered while we were wearing clothes. I traced the path of her spine and she shuddered beneath me.

CHAPTER 27

JULIANNE BECKER

Naked Nick was definitely a beautiful thing to behold.