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I thought about that. How I would have had to scramble to try to keep Mom safe, to keep Jarred clean. I wouldn't have had the resources to do either, and I would have been looking for ways to manage. There wouldn't have been time for Juliet. And being near her, surrounded by wealth while my family suffered would be nearly impossible. "I don't want it to be about the money."
"But it is," Gran finished.
"It is."
"Kong, here's the truth. Money is just lubrication. It makes things move more easily, but man cannot survive on a diet of KY Jelly alone, right?"
I wasn't sure if Gran had just made a sex lube analogy or if I was just drunk. "Weird analogy, but okay."
"Why would you resist the lubrication if someone's willing to squeeze some out for you?" Gran shot me an impish smile.
"We're going with this KY Jelly thing, huh?" I threw back the rest of my drink, fortifying myself to discuss lube with a ninety-year-old woman.
"I'm on a roll," Gran said. "Why shove things in, causing pain and complications, when you can just accept the glide and move forward? Juliet's just smoothed the way, taken care of the sticky issues so you can keep things moving."
I frowned. Was it as simple as that? Had Juliet just eliminated barriers to our ability to be together? Was sexual lubricant really the right analogy for this situation?
"Give Juliet a chance to be an actual person. Don't make her about her money," Gran suggested. "If you do that, you're no better than that pooptaco, Zac."
Let her be an actual person, I thought. God, had I made her all about her money? I had. That's exactly what I was doing. I nodded, realization dawning. "You're right."
"Little known fact, Harambe," Gran said, standing. "I'm always right."
"I'll remember that," I said.
Gran shuffled toward the doorway, her fuzzy slippers making a swooshing sound against the tile floor. "Be sure to hide the moonshine, or Tess will have both our hides in the morning," she said. And then the old woman was gone, and I was left to clean up.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Juliet
Isat in my room late into the night, thinking. If I made a list of days that ranked most crappy in my life, this one might not have made the list—it turned out I'd had a lot of crappy days—but then again, it wasn't going to rank among my favorites either. I'd tried to do something nice, to show Jace I cared about him, about his family, and it had blown up in my face. And then Tess had accused me of making everything about me.
For pretty much my whole life.
By the time dinner was over, I had needed some quiet time, some time alone. And as much as I wanted to dive into the shelter of Jace's arms, I wasn't sure those arms were the safe place they'd been before. I wasn't sure where I stood with him at all. I went upstairs, feeling heavy and worn out, like the dinner conversation had sucked the energy out of me, left me empty.
My room was quiet and soothing, the rosy light coming from the corner lamp cast a glow across the floor and the bed. I took a deep breath as I closed the door behind me, looking around. This room had been mine since we moved into this house with Gran when I was a little girl. I remembered Gran on a ladder, painting the walls pink because that was what I'd had at home. She'd brought my fluffy bedspread and all the stuffed animals from my room at my parents' house, and done everything she could to make it feel like home. But I'd felt as empty back then as I did right now—like maybe somehow the world was too big for me, like I just didn't fit into it.
As I'd stepped in from the hallway, I'd heard a giggle from Tess's room—Ryan was in there, I supposed. And I knew I should be happy for them, happy someone was finding the world a little easier to navigate than I did.
After I'd brushed my teeth and washed my face, I curled up on my bed, pulling one of the frilly pillows against my chest and pushing my nose into its soft edge.
It was time to take stock, I figured. The recent events in my life—Zac cheating on me spectacularly and now blackmailing me, Jace essentially telling me he felt differently about me because I had more money than he did—they seemed to be sending a message I needed to absorb. The person I was, or the people I'd been surrounding myself with—it wasn't working.
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, my heart twisting inside my chest. Who else could I be?
Jace's rejection was the hardest to swallow because I'd actually believed that to him I wasn't just some movie star. He'd made me feel seen in a way no one ever had, not even my own sister.
But something had gotten broken along the way.
I was just beginning to sink into my self pity, feeling the waves of despair lap around me, when my phone chimed with a text. I nearly ignored it, figuring it was Zac with more threats, my agent checking in, or the lawyer telling me how much she thought it was going to take to pay Zac off for good. I sighed and rolled across the bed to pull the phone from my nightstand.
Jace: Any chance you could come to my room?
A smile came to my lips before I remembered the words we'd had earlier in the day.
"Go find a movie star to love, Juliet. Someone like you. And one day you'll look back and you can congratulate yourself on the way you took care of that charity case that one time. That poor helpless idiot, Jace."
