Page 43 of Stray for You

“I thought you two hadn’t talked in a while,” I say.

“We haven’t,” Mom says.

“Is that … something you’re okay with?” I say. “Is she bothering you?”

Mom laughs. “She’s not bothering me. It’s been years, but it was nice hearing from her. We spent a long time catching up. It was good.”

I force myself to go through with my bite of mac ‘n’ cheese, buying myself some time by chewing. “That’s good,” I say mildly.

“She mentioned that Julian was in Seattle a couple weeks ago,” Mom says.

My blood goes cold. I nearly choke on my over-chewed mac ‘n’ cheese. I swallow so hard the meal goes down my throat like a stone.

“Oh,” I manage.

“Did you realize he was in town?” Mom says. “Apparently he travels a lot for work and just happened to get sent to Seattle. Isn’t that a crazy coincidence?”

Yeah. Crazy. Almost as crazy as me letting him fly right back out here next week.

“Weird,” I say. Apparently I’ve been reduced to single syllables. I’m not sure I could manage a whole sentence at the moment.

“Have you been in contact with him at all?”

“Why would you think that?” I say, a bit more sharply than I intend. “I mean, I just, we never really got along.”

Her lips stretch, half a smile, half a grimace. “I know. It was something Stacy and I discussed when things got more serious. We always worried about you boys having to get along.”

The guilt threatens to claw straight through me. I knew she worried about it. Of course I knew she worried about it. Backthen Julian was relentless with how he pestered me. No matter my resolve, he would push and push until I finally snapped. Then he went and made it even worse by trying to make out with me right there in my Mom’s apartment.

I must be some sort of idiot for letting a guy like that back into my life. The pain from that time period is still written plainly all over my mother’s face, and here I am inviting the source of it into my apartment for a whole week. How can I betray the only person who’s ever really cared about me? I almost grab my phone right then and there and tell Julian to cancel his flight.

“We were stupid kids,” I say, trying to reassure her.

“I know,” Mom says, “but if things had gone differently…” She shrugs. “Well, we just didn’t want to upend your lives too much.”

“You wouldn’t have,” I say. “It was nothing. We were idiot teenage boys. I’m sure Julian is… Whatever he’s doing, I’m sure he’s different now.”

Am I? Am I sure about that? I convinced myself of it last week when I agreed to hop into bed with him, but maybe that was self-delusion. I saw a good-looking guy and justified hooking up with him any way I could, all while knowing it was the dumbest decision I could possibly make.

“It’s alright,” Mom says, and I must have a look on my face because she’s doing her soothing Mom voice. “It was just a funny coincidence.”

“Yeah,” I agree, trying to sound normal, “it’s weird.”

Weird doesn’t begin to describe the feeling of having Julian Brooks back in my life. I never wanted to see him again once I was finally free of him. Now I’m covertly spending entire weeks with him. And the worst part is that I know the second those bright blue eyes and that unfairly dashing smile settle on me, my resolve will crumble like wet sand. The second I have an opportunity to shove him against a wall and make him whine out my name again, I’ll do it. It’s getting me itchy and uncomfortablejust thinking about it at the dinner table where I sit eating my mother’s food while lying to her face.

If she ever finds out that I’ve willingly brought Julian Brooks back into our lives, I’ll never live it down. But I know even that won’t stop me from getting my hands on him the moment he’s in reach.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Julian

“SORRY, MY PLACE IS kind of…”

It’s perfect.

I step into a one-bedroom apartment in a small town somewhere north of Seattle and south of Tripp Lake. The entrance reveals nearly the entire space. To my left sits a kitchen where the refrigerator squeezes in beside a countertop and stove. A table separates the kitchen from a living room containing a couch, a coffee table and a TV mounted on the wall. A potted plant basks in the sunlight filtering in through the glass doors that lead to the balcony. Cameron’s guitar rests on a stand in the other corner. A sweater lies on the couch, and used dishes litter the table. I stand amid a pile of mismatched shoes scattered atop a welcome mat.

Cameron bustles past me, sweeping up the dishes and putting them in the sink. He snatches the sweater on the couch and tosses it to the right, presumably into his bedroom.

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