Page 294 of Branded
I had always thought Chelsea was being unreasonable.
Now, I understood that I probably hadn’t done a good job of hiding what I felt for Jules, understood that wasn’t good boyfriend material and made me a bit of a dick. But…that was still no excuse for Chelsea pogo-sticking so far over the fucking line it wasn’t even funny. She’d hurt Jules, made her feel unsafe at her place of work and no apology I could make would undo that.
Still, I found I needed to give it to her, would apologize for an eternity if it meant that she’d feel better, wouldn’t have nightmares, wouldn’t hurt.
“Jules,” I said. “You’re being really cool about all this, but I’m still?—”
Her fingers squeezed around mine, cutting me off. “So, your real name is Luca?”
I blinked at the sharp left turn. “What?”
She turned our hands over, slipped her fingers from mine, and my stomach clenched. I wanted to keep touching her. Wanted her to keep touching me. Not to pull away.
But before I could maneuver more touching, she spread my hand out, began tracing her finger over the lines of my palm, and I relaxed because…touching. “Your first name isn’t Cas or Casian or…some over C name that begins with Cas? Instead, it’s Luca?”
I held very still, not wanting to startle her, to have her pull back. To have her stop touching me. “My first name is Luca, but no one calls me that.” I shrugged. “Luca is my dad. I’ve been Cas for as long as I can remember.”
“Oh,” she murmured, the tip of her finger sliding over my skin, raising the hairs on my arm, my nape. “I never knew.”
I touched her cheek. “How would you?”
She went still at the question, or maybe at my touch. Then her shoulders lifted and fell on a breath. “I guess,” she said on a soft laugh, “I wouldn’t know.”
“Exactly.” I gave myself one more second of that silken skin before pulling back. “And anyway, I should say that I’ve been Cas for as long as I can remember with everyone except for my mom. I’m always Luca with her because”—I made air quotes—“she didn’t spend nine months carrying me and twenty hours pushing me out to not call me by my given name.”
She giggled. “I think she earned it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She did. So, I put up with Luca because she’s awesome.”
“It sounds like it.” Sad in her eyes, in her voice.
The silence dropped between us like a curtain separating the actors and the audience—a slow, steady descent until it was there and nothing but the most determined bout of applause could bypass the barrier.
I didn’t have acting chops, wasn’t going to break the quiet of the evening, the peace I felt with her sitting next to me by smacking my hockey-player-sized palms together like an imbecile.
But I couldn’t let the silence sit between us.
I knew that her sitting quiet and introspective and more open than she’d ever been before might be my best chance to find out more about her.
I danced my fingers along her forearm, lightly stroking skin that was like silk there, that was so soft it almost felt like a crime to touch it, let alone to have a portion of it obscured by bandages and wrap. “Did you always go by Jules? Or is that strictly a Breakers’ addendum to your life?” I asked.
Her smile…was so beautiful it lit up the space between us. “When Beth heard that I had never had a nickname”—she glanced down at my hand and I hated that I’d lost my view of her face, but her voice was soft and Jules and almost as good—“she decided to remedy that.” A peek up, giving me a glimpse of those gorgeous eyes. “Luckily, she chose something tolerable.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Her head lifted further, her mouth tipping up. “It’s not Commando,” she said, referring to the name Beth had recently tried to christen Smitty with—a reference to the fact the man lived to be naked and didn’t care who knew it.
I touched Jules’s cheek again, soaked in the feel of that silky skin. “True,” I said, grinning at her. “Jules is beautiful, like jewels.”
Confusion in her eyes. “Like topaz,” I whispered, brushing her lashes. “And garnet,” I added, running my thumb over the apples of her cheeks. “Rubies.” I touched her bottom lip.
“Garnet?”
My mouth turned up. “My mom is big into birthstones. I always thought that knowledge was just taking up space in my head.” Instead, it was helpful, giving me the words I needed.
At least, I thought that until I saw the flicker of sad in her eyes.
“What?” I murmured, thumb running lightly over her bottom lip.
