Since He Really Feels (He Feels) (32 page)

I yelled out her name and some curse words as I came powerfully into her at the same moment that she detonated beneath me, her body constricting tightly.

I pulled out and collapsed beside her, our beers forgotten on the patio as we clutched at each other for several quiet moments.

CHAPTER 35

JULIANNE BECKER

I kissed the forehead of my quietly sleeping and still blissfully naked fiancé. I was getting hungry, and it was almost time for his dinner surprise.

His eyes fluttered open, and then he stretched with a groan.

“Fuck, I’m sore after that one,” he said, his voice sleepy and scratchy.

I grinned. “Me, too.”

He focused in on me. “You look beautiful. How long have I been out?”

“Thanks,” I said, glancing down at the dress I had changed into. “A little over an hour. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Do we have plans?”

I nodded. “Reservations in about thirty minutes.”

“How dressy are we talking?”

“Match me.”

“I could never match your beauty, baby.”

I grinned and melted a little at his cheesy line.

He got up to get dressed while I touched up my
makeup, and then he appeared by my side. He was wearing charcoal gray dress pants and a black button down shirt, and he looked positively delectable. His hazel eyes glowed against his dark shirt, and I was inclined to skip our reservations and just have
him
for dinner.

But there were people waiting for us.

I had a surprise, and I was pretty nervous about it. I wasn’t sure if he was going to like it or if he was going to hate it, but with our upcoming wedding, I needed to do
something
.

So I’d arranged this for him.

The only problem was that he might not see it that way.

He swept my hair off of my neck and then kissed the skin there, and I shivered at his touch. And then we headed down to the car. I let him drive this time, directing him to the restaurant where people were waiting for our arrival.

We walked in, and I told the hostess we had reservations. She found my name. “The rest of your party is already here,” she said, and I glanced nervously over at Nick, who looked surprised. “Right this way.”

Nick pulled at my hand as I followed her.
“The rest of our party?”

I just smiled anxiously at him, hoping he couldn’t sense my fear.

I saw Josh first. He looked uncomfortable as he looked up at me.

And then I saw everyone else: Eleanor, a man to her right who I assumed was
Walt, and the girl who I’d recently been exchanging emails with on a near daily basis: Nick’s half sister, Alexa.

I smiled at everyone at the table, and then I looked over at Nick. As his eyes registered the people before him, I saw first shock and then anger cross his perfect features.

His hand tightened painfully over mine, and in that single movement, I knew that I had made a mistake.

I had truly done this for him. I was trying to put him first. I thought about how close I was to my own family, and I wanted that for Nick.

But clearly it was
not
something Nick wanted.

His eyes locked with Josh’s, and I saw an unspoken fight pass between the brothers.

“Happy birthday, Nicholas,” his mother said, not bothering to get up and hug the son she hadn’t seen since our engagement party. Alexa stood. I’d imagined this moment about a million times since she had first reached out to me. She was pretty; she had Nick’s hazel eyes and dark hair.

“Julianne, it’s so great to finally meet you,” she said, pulling me into a hug that forced me to let go of Nick’s hand.

“You, too,” I whispered.

She headed toward Nick to give him a hug, too, but he denied the motion, instead turning to me with an intense fury radiating off of him.

“Can we talk outside for a moment?” he asked through gritted teeth.

I nodded. “Excuse us,” I said to our guests.

He stormed outside, the fury only gaining in power.

“What the fuck is this, Julianne?” At least he’d waited until we were alone outside to start yelling at me.

“It’s your birthday dinner.” My voice was soft and even. I was barely holding it together as I feared his anger. I’d seen him angry, but I’d never seen him like this.

“My birthday dinner.
My birthday dinner? If it was my fucking birthday dinner, it would be just you and me in there. Maybe Josh. And instead you invited my mother? Fucking Walt? Alexa? I told you I wanted nothing to do with any of them.”

“I know, Nick. I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“Why am I sorry?”

“You’re sorry because I’m mad. Why did you do this?”

“I just want to fix things.”

“This isn’t fucking fixable! You have no idea the shit that woman has put me through!”

His voice was getting louder and louder. People were walking toward their cars out of the restaurant, their heads turning at the volume of his voice. It was embarrassing, but it was my own fault. Clearly, in this case, I’d pushed too hard.

Josh appeared behind us. “Dude, calm the fuck down.”

“Were you in on this shit?” Nick asked his brother.

“Yes. I’m with her on this,” he answered, jamming a thumb in my direction.

“You want me to forgive our mother?”

“No. I don’t forgive her, and I don’t expect you to. But do you really want to live a life with grudges?”

“Nick, you don’t want that blackness in your heart,” I interjected. “You don’t have to forgive her. What she did to you two is unforgivable. But you can’t hold that against
Alexa.”

He shot me a look that would have sent me to my grave if looks could kill.

“Alexa means nothing to me.”

“I understand that. But she reached out to me, Nick.”

“How?” he challenged.

“Our engagement announcement in the paper.
She saw my name and looked me up. She found me through BKG a few months ago.”

“You’ve been keeping this from me for months?”

Josh backed away to give us a private moment for a lover’s quarrel. “She asked me to keep it quiet.”

“So your allegiance is to her now.”

“No, Nick. You come first. Always. But I knew that you’d never agree to meet them, to talk to them. To think about salvaging any sort of relationship with any of them. I also knew that your mother came to visit every year on your birthday, so I intervened. Josh helped me.” I motioned toward Josh, desperate to bring someone else into this conversation that was so clearly going completely wrong.

“Dude, you’re getting married in a few months,” Josh said. “The least you can do is let your fiancée meet your family. Get to know them. Even if it’s completely fucked up, and even if you don’t want a relationship with them, you owe her that.”

“It’s my family. It’s my decision. I want nothing to do with any of them. And I can’t believe you fucking did this to me.” His voice was shaking with rage.

“Julianne, can you give us a minute?” Josh asked me. I nodded and headed back into the restaurant. I stalked right up to the bar, ordered a shot of tequila, threw it back, left a ten dollar bill, and went to our table of guests.

The tequila significantly calmed my nerves, but I still had a raging fiancé outside. I sat down, and Alexa gave me a look of sympathy that nearly made me cry.

“Is he okay?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“I’m so sorry. This was all my idea, and clearly it was a bad one.”

“Don’t be sorry, Alexa.”

“Call me
Lex.”

I smiled sadly, because I knew that
Lex could become a good friend of mine. Instead, she’d be relegated to holding the place of a relative of my future husband.

Nick and Josh appeared, and Nick took his place beside me. I could still sense the tension emitting from every pore of his body.
He picked up the menu and didn’t look at anybody.

The waitress came and asked what we wanted to drink, and he ordered a double whiskey on the rocks. He never drank like that, and something told me I’d be taking care of him later that evening.

I certainly was no longer expecting a repeat performance of that afternoon.

Tense silence descended on our table until the waitress returned with our drinks, and then we placed our food order.

After she left, the silence resumed. The wait for our meal felt endless, but finally our food was served. I looked around at everyone’s plates, and everyone seemed pleased with what they had ordered. I wasn’t sure if I’d made a good choice with the restaurant I had chosen, but Yelp had been helpful.

These were the kinds of pointless thoughts I was having while I waited for someone – anyone – to talk at the table. We all swirled our glasses, took random sips of our drinks, cut our food slowly.

Finally, it was Josh who broke the silence with a longer speech than I’d ever heard from him. His speech came just as I was finishing up my meal.

“I can’t stand this bullshit. Someone has to say something, and apparently it’s going to be me. Julianne,” he turned to me, “thank you for setting this up. Thank you for bringing us together. I know it isn’t turning out like you planned, but it’s because my brother is too fucking stubborn for his own good. Mother, Walt, I know you planned to come to Phoenix to see us for our birthdays, so thank you for making the trip here instead. And
Alexa, I know I personally have never given you a chance. What happened is in the past, and I’d like to start over with you. I’ve never had a sister. Wait… that’s not right. I suppose I’ve always had a sister, but I never gave her a chance. So I’d like to start now.”

I stared at Josh with gratitude. He
had broken the silence when I didn’t know what the fuck else to say.

“Thanks, Josh,”
Lex whispered. “I’d love that.”

Eleanor just sat there with that same air of indifference and disdain, a condescending smirk crossing her plastic features.

Clearly I’d been completely wrong about her. I thought she cared about her children. I thought she’d want a reconciliation with her boys, that she’d enjoy seeing her boys start a relationship with her daughter. But the look on her face was clear. She didn’t give a shit about her kids. Nick had been right, but it had taken that one look from her smug face for me to realize it. As I had been planning this party, I felt like I was doing the right thing, but now I knew that inviting her had been a mistake.

I still held out hope that he’d be able to form some sort of relationship with
Lex, though. There was always that chance, and then maybe my efforts wouldn’t have been wasted.

The check arrived, and I paid for everyone’s meals. It was the least I could do after everyone made the trip to see Nick at my request.

We all stood to leave, the silence never broken. It wasn’t until we were out in the parking lot that Nick finally spoke. “Thank you all for coming. I’m sorry I’ve been an asshole.”

“Nick,
it’s fine,” I interrupted him. “It’s my fault.”

He turned to me, eyes flashing. “Let me do this.”

I backed off.

“Mother, what you did to Josh and
me after Dad died was bullshit. There’s not much you can do now to make up for it, not that you’ve ever cared to try. Ball’s in your court.”

He turned toward his half sister. “
Alexa, I’m sorry. Josh said something earlier that struck a chord, and I’ve been replaying it in my mind all night. What happened isn’t your fault. We’ve got half of the same blood running through our veins.”

I saw tears fill
Lex’s eyes. She obviously wanted to have a relationship with her brothers so badly. It had taken a long time to get there, but the door had finally been opened.

He reached out to hug his sister, and then Josh lined up behind him for his own
hug.

Tears were spilling down her cheeks after she had hugged both of them, and I felt relieved that at least something positive had come from this dinner. I relaxed for the first time that evening, feeling
happy that he had finally seen how stubborn he was being where his sister was concerned and that his anger had dissipated somewhat.

His mother handed him an envelope, as did
Lex, and then Josh said he’d see us back in Phoenix. And then we were on our own.

We got in the car to head back to the hotel, and there was an icy silence coming from Nick.

“Thank you for giving Lex a chance.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

His words stung.

“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you.”

“You should be.”

More hurtful words.