Julian (Beautiful Mine #1) (12 page)

EVIE

It all happened so fast. The way he charged at me, hungry like an animal; I couldn’t resist. I let him take me. Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe it was wrong. But it happened.

And I liked it.

I crawled back into my bed where Julian laid waiting for me under the warm, thick blankets. We were both naked and skin-to-skin, and I curled up under his arm, resting my head on his shoulder.

“I can hear your heartbeat,” I said.

“Still trying to come down from that,” he laughed. “It was so… intense.”

I nodded, running my fingers down the side of his arm and quietly noticing the sudden girth of his arms.

I traced my fingers down his abs, where lean muscle rippled through his flesh.

“Do you think what we did was okay?” I asked softly, hoping for a little reassurance.

“Absolutely,” he said in a firm tone that told me all I needed to know. “I wanted that, Evie. Believe me. I wanted you.”

I leaned up, pressing my lips onto his. “Thank you for tonight. I had a really great time.”

“I know.” He smirked. “You said that earlier.”

“I mean it though. The limo, the date, the kiss—the sex.” I laughed. “All of it was perfect.”

“Well, now you know what a date with me is like,” he said. “You no longer have to wonder.”

A million words swirled around my head and were left unsaid as sleepiness began to wash over me. “Goodnight, Julian.”

“Goodnight, Evie.”

***

I hadn’t slept that well in a long time. Waking up, still wrapped in each other’s arms, my eyes adjusted to the sunlight filling my room. Julian was still sound asleep, like he hadn’t moved a muscle all night just to make sure I was comfortable.

I tried to carefully slip out of his arm and head downstairs to make his breakfast, but he woke anyway.

“Go back to sleep,” I whispered when I saw him stirring. I slipped on my pajamas, which were lying in a heap on the floor.

He sat up anyway and stretched his arms over his head, his eyes fixed on me. I ran my fingers through my messy bedhead in a vain attempt to look halfway decent, and Julian laughed.

“You look fine,” he assured me. “Stop.”

“I’m going to get your breakfast and your medicine,” I said, immediately going back into nurse mode.

“Evie, Evie,” he said, shaking his head. “Stop. I told you, you don’t have to do that stuff.”

“What am I here for, then?” I asked. “You’re kind of my job…”

He climbed out of bed easily, as if he were never sick in the first place, and walked over toward me. Grabbing my hands, he looked me in the eyes, “From here on out, things are going to be different, okay?”

“Different how?”

He leaned down to grab his clothes from the floor and got dressed. Gone was the self-conscious Julian who didn’t want me to so much as look at him, and standing before me was the new Julian, my lover, a man oozing confidence and strength. Maybe getting laid did that to a man?

“Evie,” he said, “I’ll make sure you always have a job. Don’t worry about a thing, all right?”

He zipped his pants up and ushered me out of my room as he headed toward the stairs.

“You’re coming with me?” I asked, watching as he took each step with ease.

“Yeah,” he said. “We can eat breakfast downstairs today.”

He took a seat at the kitchen table as I prepared breakfast, and I could feel him watching my every move. He couldn’t take his eyes off me, and I kind of liked it.

“You won’t be eating cold eggs today,” I teased as I cracked an egg over the side of a frying pan. “These’ll be fresh and hot, just like you like them.”

He rolled his eyes, smirking as he stood up and walked my way, leaning his elbows against the marble countertop of the island.

“I feel like I do more cooking around here than nursing,” I laughed. “I’d have figured you guys would have your own chef, or something.”

He shrugged. “We used to. But my parents are gone so much it didn’t makes sense to keep someone here full-time.”

I flipped his eggs and salt and peppered them. “You want orange juice?”

“Sure,” he said, still transfixed on me.

I plated his eggs and poured his juice, sitting them down in front of him on the island.

“You never eat,” he said. “You make all this good food, and you never eat anything.”

“I’ve never been a big eater,” I said. Dating Spencer Goodwin would do that to a girl. Even at a size six, he was constantly telling me to exercise and “tighten up,” as if dating a size six wasn’t good enough for him. It left me hating food. I was just lucky it never turned into an eating disorder. “I nibble here and there. Mostly when I cook.”

He forked a piece of egg and held it up to my mouth. “Eat.”

I laughed. “What, are you trying to plump me up now?”

“You need to eat,” he said, pressing the eggs so close to my mouth I could feel the heat radiating off them. I opened my mouth and accepted the bite. “Make yourself something.”

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and took a seat next to him. “Happy?”

“It’ll do,” he said. “For now.”

After breakfast, we headed back upstairs to his room where his nebulizer awaited us, a stark reminder of Julian’s harsh reality. I watched as he breathed in his treatment and washed down a handful of pills, and I sprawled out across the foot of his bed.

“I like how it’s just you and me here,” I said. “It’s kind of nice that your parents are gone all the time.”

“It is now,” he agreed. “It’s rather convenient.”

For a split second, I wondered if the magic of this week would vanish the minute his parents returned. I couldn’t imagine parading around like two lovers would go over well with Caroline.

“What are we going to do when your parents come back?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“Your mom would kill me if she knew,” I said, my mouth suddenly turning dry at the thought. “I’m going to lose my job. She’s going to fire me.”

“We’ll just have to keep it under wraps until we figure out how to break it to her,” he said as if it were no big deal.

“She’ll report me to the Board of Nursing,” I said. “I know it. She will. Oh, God.”

“Calm down,” he said, taking my hands in his. “You’re overthinking this.”

“I wasn’t born with rich parents,” I said. “I can’t jeopardize my career like this. If I lose this job, I’ll have to move back home. I can’t do that to my parents. They can barely afford to take care of themselves. They don’t need another mouth to feed, and…”

He gently laid me back down on the bed, stroking my cheek before saying, “What if I just took care of you? You’d never have to work another day in your life. I’d take care of your family, too.”

He laid himself down, his body next to mine, and placed his hand on the curve of my hip.

“I don’t expect you to do that,” I said. “It sounds nice, but it’s not realistic. Besides, I like to work.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of you and you can still work. For fun.”

“Well, I didn’t say working was fun,” I laughed.

“What would you do if you didn’t have to work?”

“Travel,” I said without pause. “I want to go to Paris someday. And Rome. Cliché, I know.”

“Not at all.”

“I’ll probably never leave this stupid town. I’ll probably never set foot outside the country.”

“What if we went together?” he suggested.

“Have you ever traveled before?” I asked.

“Nope, not like that.” He stared at me with an intensity I’d never seen before. “That’s all the more reason for me to join you on your excursion, wouldn’t you say?”

I smiled, leaning in for a kiss. “I like the way you think.”

“Then it’s settled,” he said. “We’re going to travel the world together.”

“You are so handsome,” I said as I took in every curve and angle of his face. “You don’t belong here.”

“What?” he said with a curious laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know when you look at an old picture of a sailor or something from the 1940s, and they just look so damn handsome?” I said. “It’s like you’re from another era. That’s what you look like. You’re classically handsome.”

“Is that a good thing?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Very,” I said, leaning in to kiss his full lips. “It’s a very, very good thing.”

JULIAN

“You’ve changed my life, Evie,” I said, lying on the bed next to her one night. It had been nearly a week since our date, and every day with her had been surreal. “You’ve given me a reason to live. I’ve never really had that before.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, waving me off. “You’re giving me too much credit, here.”

I sat up, looking her squarely in her gorgeous blue eyes. “Growing up, I had everything I could ever want. Any gadget. Any video game. Any toy. But now I know that none of that mattered. None of it meant a damn thing. My parents knew nothing about how to love and care for a child. That’s why they pay people to do it for them.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, running her fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry you never had what you needed.”

“But I have it now,” I said. “And I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to lose you.”

She looked as if my words struck the right chord with her. Her eyes watered and she smiled a bittersweet smile, thinking what we both knew but were too afraid to say out loud. We’d found exactly what we needed in each other.

I leaned in and kissed her, my heart on fire with wanting. I couldn’t get close enough to her. I couldn’t kiss her enough or look at her enough or touch her enough. I hardly recognized this side of me, but I was desperate never to lose it.

“I-I think I’m falling in love with you,” I stammered. The words were the hardest ones I’d ever said in my entire life.

Her eyes widened. “Julian…”

“No, I mean it.”

“You’ve only known me a month,” she objected. “How do you know you love me?”

“This,” I said, motioning between us, “is the only thing that’s ever felt real to me. That’s how I know.”

She looked to the side, lost in thought. “How did we get here? How did this happen?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I just know that it did happen. I don’t want to think about it too much. That’s how you ruin things. You know that, Evie.”

I brushed a strand of hair off her face and she reached up to take my hand. “Do you believe in destiny?”

“I believe we create our own destiny,” I said.

“That’s not very romantic,” she said, swatting my chest. “Humor me. Don’t you think that maybe we were supposed to meet? Like this was some part of a divine plan?”

“I suppose,” I said.

“What are the odds that the stars would align so we could meet?” she asked, her eyes widening again, her words ripe with excitement at the thought. “All the things that have happened that lead up to this… It’s really incredible, if you stop to think about it.”

I leaned in and kissed her neck, tasting her soft flesh. “God, I can’t get enough of you.”

“Where do you want to be in five years?” she asked, her voice trailing as she likely remembered my prognosis.

I was never supposed to live past eighteen, and I’d spent my whole life taking one long, tiresome day at a time. I never made plans for the future. I didn’t even know if I had a future.

“If you really believe we make our own destiny, tell me what your future holds,” she insisted. “I refuse to believe you’re still going to be living here when you’re twenty-nine.”

I stopped kissing her and rolled to my back, drawing in a long breath as I stared at the ceiling. I’d never thought about the future at all, until I met her.

“In five years,” I said, clearing my throat, “we’ll be married. I’ll be healthy, thanks to my beautiful nurse-wife. We’ll be living in an old Arts and Crafts bungalow that we so lovingly restored right after our wedding. We’ll have spent a solid year backpacking through Europe and traveling the world. When we get back, we’ll try to have a baby. It’ll probably be a girl, and she’ll look just like you, but with my eyes. I’ll gave gained plenty of weight, thanks to your amazing cooking, and you’ll trade your jeans in for yoga pants, but that’ll be okay because you look beautiful in anything. We’ll engage in debates as we listen to NPR after dinner, and we’ll retire each night with a cup of tea and a stack of good books. We’ll go on dates at least once a week, and every year we’ll take a vacation to somewhere new. Never the same place twice—”

I stopped when I noticed her wiping away tears.

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning over to comfort her.

“That’s so beautiful,” she said, smiling through the tears. “I didn’t expect you to say that.”

“Did that sound all right?” I asked.

“I’d love to have that with you,” she sighed with a smile, her eyes drying.

“Then it’s settled,” I said. “We’re doing it. We’re creating our own destiny. And screw anyone who tries to stand in the way of it.”

I wanted to taste her on my tongue in a way I hadn’t yet experienced. I had to have her. All of her. My hands traveled down her side and slipped under the waistband of her pants before traveling south. Her breasts rose and fell quickly in anticipation. I moved down, pulling off her pants, and lowered my head. As my tongue waved over her soft, wet folds, I tasted paradise.

I could feel her body relaxing and tensing in waves as heavy sighs escaped her sweet lips above.

“Julian,” she moaned as she reached her fingers down and gripped my hair. “Oh, God…”

I continued, not wanting to stop. I loved her taste, like a sweet musk that could only belong to her. My hands traveled up, massaging her soft breasts and lightly pinching her pert nipples as I lapped her up below.

My fingers traveled back down the length of her body, dragging along her soft skin and following all her curves and angles as if they wanted to memorize them.

“Oh, ah…” she sighed as she approached the brink of ecstasy. “I’m… ah!”

Her thighs squeezed around my head as her back arched into the soft mattress below her. Within seconds, she’d melted into relaxed state, pulling me up toward her.

“That came out of nowhere,” she said with a dreamy, satisfied smile across her face.

“You’re sleeping in my bed tonight,” I told her, pulling her closer. “I’m not done with you yet.”

I rolled over on top of her and propped myself up on my elbows, creating a cozy little cocoon for us. Staring deep into her eyes, I said, “I’m going to give you the most amazing life, Evie Cawthorn.”

She scrunched her face and laughed, as if I’d said the most insane thing she’d ever heard.

“I don’t know if I should sleep in here tonight,” she said with a pout on her full lips. “Your parents are coming back tomorrow.”

I grunted, rolling off her as reality began to sink in.

“We have to do this right,” she said, clutching her hand to her heart. “We can’t make them suspicious of anything. When the time is right, we’ll tell them together.”

“I just don’t want this to end,” I said. “This week we’ve been having…”

“It doesn’t have to end,” she assured me. “My feelings for you won’t go away just because your parents are back. We just have to put the brakes on for a bit until we figure things out.”

I grabbed her hand and interlaced our fingers. “Promise nothing will change?”

“I promise.”

“I just don’t want to wait that long.”

“For what?” she asked.

“To start our life together,” I said. I’d staked my claim. I’d resolved to make her my wife. It was going to happen. “Who knows how much time I have left?”

“Why are you talking like that?” she said, her voice faltering as her momentary bliss completely dissipated.

“I’m just being realistic,” I said with a shrug. “We might need to cram a lot of stuff into a little bit of time. That’s all I’m saying.”

Death was a fact of life. Always had been. Talking about the inevitable was, to me, completely normal.

“I just don’t want to wait, okay?” I said to her matter-of-factly. “Evie, if you really want to be with me, I can’t promise I’ll be around forever, but I can promise I’ll give you the most incredible life you’ve ever imagined. I’ll give you the life you deserve, even long after I’m gone.”

Her lips pursed as she averted her eyes, thinking about what it really meant to commit to me.

“I love you, Evie,” I assured her. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything in my entire life. Marry me. I’m completely serious. Marry me.”