Page 65 of Taking The Virgin

Chapter23

The air seepsout of me as Jemma pokes me in the arm with her elbow.

“Who is that?” she asks. “Because we definitely didn’t order him up to deliver flowers for your birthday. I mean, I wish I’d thought of it, but… Are you even listening, Jules?”

I still don’t know what to say as I stare atOwen.

My teenaged sister hops out of the car. She has to come around to my side to open my door. When she starts pulling me out, I don’tmove.

I just sit there as Owen watches me while still holding the flowers. Funny, even the flowers can be a shield for him—but then he lowers them as I see something deep and profound in his eyes, even fromhere.

“Jules!” Jemma whispers. “You’re freaking meout.”

Freaking out… Yes, that’s definitely what I’m doing as Owen starts to walk toward thecar.

Panicked, I reach over to start the engine again, but that doesn’t make sense. Nothing about what I’m feeling right now makes sense as emotion surges in me like an off-balance chemical rush—sadness, uncertainty, anger taking meover.

Then I remember the last time we saw each other: Owen saying that he never wanted to see me again right before he left me and never cameback…

I break down into the tears that have been threatening me ever since he left. I cry into my hands, covering my face so that no one can see what a true mess I amnow.

Why is he here? Does he think flowers are going to solve something?

“Jules?” I hear Jemma saying.

Then I hear Owen’s voice, slightly out of breath as if he ran the rest of the way over here. “Juliet?”

I feel his big hand slide onto my arm as if he wants to hold me, comfort me, but in a flash of confused, blurred, teary rage, I burst out of the car. Suddenly I’m beating on Owen’s chest, and it feels like rock beneath my fists.

“I hate you!” I yell. “I hate all your stupid compulsive rules and habits and everything you standfor!”

I pummel him again and again, but he merely stands there and takes it. Through my tears I see that Jason has run up behind Owen to take the flowers from him before I beat those to a pulp, too, and the thought that my own brother is helping the man who broke my heart pisses me off evenmore.

“Juliet, I was a coward.”

I pull my hand back from giving Owen another punch as his words echo around me. A latent sob shudders through me as I look up at him and blink back tears.

“What did you say?” I ask in a shaky voice.

“I said I was a coward. I ran away from you and your messy, chaotic reality and everything it represented.”

He’s not stiff or tense. There’s something very open about him now, and I keep my fist raised. But I’m listening, even as the blood jams in my veins, urging me to run away because I’m afraid he’s going to hurt me again, that there’ll be more emotional pain in my near future.

Yet, dammit, I want to stay and listen.

No, I think. I just want to stay withhim…

He must see that he’s got my attention, and he continues. “My whole life I’ve tried to put everything into order. I’ve tried to keep the demons of my childhood at bay. But, now, for the first time, I’ve realized that it isn’t worth it to be neat and tidy and ordered anymore.” He tilts his head like a tamed beast. “All I want now is you, Juliet. At anycost.”

The words are still swirling around me, waiting for me to grab onto them. Meanwhile, he looks at my brothers and sisters who are hanging onto his every word, just as gape-mouthed as I was when I first showed up at his mansion’s doorstep.

Then he looks back at me. “Most importantly, I want all of the crazy messiness that comes with you, too.”

He can’t mean that he would also accept the kids, because they’re a part of me. I’ll never go anywhere without them again.

I doubt everything he’s saying, because he’s spent so much time pushing me away—and everything that surroundsme.

As I try to catch my breath, finding some sense in all this, I hear little Jazzie whisper to the otherkids.

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