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His words hovered around my heart. My body was drained, as if every weight of the world converged in my undoing. Julian exposed his heart in a way that’d never been purer. The guilt he’d placed on his own shoulders was his promise, and he knelt beside me, a broken man on the verge of losing it all.
A tear dangled from my nose before running down the corner of my mouth. We locked eyes, and I traced his lips with the pad of my thumb. Neither of us said a word, as if speaking would sever our connection. I began to pull away. As soon as my thumb shifted, he wrapped his hand around my wrist.
“Don’t.” His voice cracked. “I’ll walk away from all of it for you. I’ll do whatever it takes.” He gathered my hands in his. “I won’t stop until I get what I want.”
I tilted my head. “What do you want, Julian?”
“I want vows, Phoebe. I want it all.”
“Why is it so important to have a piece of paper to prove what we feel?” I tried to pull my hands away, but he held firm with one hand, cradling the back of my head with the other.
He hesitated as he glanced toward the ground. Finally lifting his chin, dampness glistened in the corners of his eyes. “What are you afraid of? Why are you scared to marry me?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I want to marry you, but it scares the shit out of me. I wish I could give you a better answer, but that’s all I’ve got.”
He traced the trail of tears down my face. “Baby, I’m not going anywhere. If you promise to keep that ring on your finger, I won’t push.”
“It shouldn’t be this hard,” I sobbed, shaking my head.
“Phoebe, anything worth having doesn’t come easy. We’ve fought like hell for what we have. That’s what makes us special.” I nodded as he placed a hand on each of my cheeks. “You listen to me, Miss Ryan, we’ll fight your father head on together—no secrets and no lies.”
Without another word, he pulled me into his arms. Willingly, I became engulfed in him, and he once again became my shelter. With his lips buried in my hair, unspoken words neither of us wanted to hear lingered.
History was about to repeat itself.
And with that realization, silence became golden.
***
At first, it sounded like someone let a hungry, pissed-off hawk loose in the bedroom. I alternated between fear for my life and an intense desire to beat the window workers within an inch of their lives for fucking up the repairs, when my brain registered my phone was ringing. I knocked everything off the nightstand until I dragged it back to the warmth of our eight hundred thread count cocoon.
“If this isn’t Channing Tatum, go to hell,” I croaked, still half asleep.
“I’m beside you, you know,” Julian mumbled into his pillow, and rolled over.
The snort from the other end of the line was so loud, I pulled the phone away and glanced at the caller ID. Rolling my eyes, I shoved it back against my ear. “What the hell, Faith? Do you own a clock?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said, way too damn chipper for seven a.m. “And as the official coordinator of your baby shower, there are decisions that needed your immediate attention. Unless you want a fun-filled baby shower at Shenanigan’s, I suggest you wake the fuck up.”
“Fine.” I propped against the headboard and rubbed my eyes. “Shoot.”
She took a deep breath as if she were about to hit me with some serious shit. “Okay, I know it’s a sore subject, but since you and Julian weren’t able to find out the gender, and there’s no baby name…”
“Yeah?”
“What color and theme am I supposed to use for the party?”
I sat blinking, waiting for her to finish the rest of her thought. With nothing but silence between us, my mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“I don’t kid about party swag, Pheebs. This is Hollywood. It’s all about publicity. Julian Bale cannot have a lame-ass party.”
Closing my eyes, I counted to three before answering. “Faith, I don’t care what color you decorate with—use black, purple…fucking puke green for all I care. It’s just the band and friends. If paparazzi show up, you might as well invite the LAPD, because I’ll stun everyone’s balls off.”
“Pheebs—”
“Goodbye, Faith, love you.” I threw my phone on the floor and flung myself onto the mattress.
“Fight with the bestie?” Julian mocked, facedown into his pillow. Pulling my own pillow from behind my head, I smacked him with it. “Ah, fuck!”
