Page 108 of Alive At Night

Reading those words made me feel like punching something. My fingers shook as I texted her back.

I’m not happy, Juniper.

I could have said so much more. I owed her apologies on top of apologies, but that wasn’t a conversation to have over text. So I pivoted to the more important thing for tonight.

You should be here.

DAISY: I needed a little space.

Okay. I’m going to be in the garage for the next couple of hours, tweaking a few things on Noah’s bike. There’s a spot for you on the couch next to Gemma if you start feeling better.

I had a hunch that it wasn’t space from Gems that she needed.

Juniper belonged here, and I realized I had to overcome years of telling her she didn’t.

If I needed to leave to make her feel comfortable, then I would leave.

I’d do anything.

* * *

Juniper was tryingto kill me.

Since destroying little bits of my heart wasn’t good enough, she was now attacking my dick. No surprise there. As if the first day back at work after a long weekend hadn’t been brutal enough on its own, Juni left about five minutes ago after finishing her last meeting of the day and came back wearing a short and flirty dress designed to tease the hell out of me.

I unashamedly stared at her.

To be honest, I’d been doing it all day. Although my sisters told me Juni had made an eventual appearance on Thanksgiving, I stuck to my word and stayed in the garage. Meaning I hadn’t seen her since last week, and now I was soaking up every little glimpse of her.

But this…this was too much. She seemed to have come back from our weekend in Whitebridge on a mission.

“What are you wearing?”

She didn’t give me her eyes when she replied. “What I’m wearing doesn’t concern you, Julian.”

“Maybe it doesn’t concern me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be concerned,” I grunted, wondering where the hell she planned to go in that.

“You wanted to justexist, Julian.” She slammed her laptop shut before looking up at me beneath her lashes. “Let me exist.”

I closed my eyes momentarily to get my shit together. This existing thing? I hated it. Didn’t she realize I hated it?

“Juni—”

“It’s a dress,” she cut me off before bending down to grab her purse from beneath her desk.

My cock stiffened to an unbearably painful degree.

Standing again, Juniper swiveled back around to flash a smirk in my direction. She knew exactly what she just fucking did to me. “Do you have a problem with it?”

“Not a problem, no,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “But there isn’t much of it.”

That was the mildest way I could think of reminding her that it would only take half a second for me to get beneath any fabric she put on her body.

She raised a brow. It was done mockingly, and somehow, that made it even hotter. “I thought you weren’t afraid of a little bare skin, Julian.”

“I’m not.” I stood, slamming the door to our office shut as I stepped toward her. If she noticed my obvious arousal, it didn’t register on her face, which was likely for the best. “Your skin, your lips, any little bit of you, I’m not afraid of any of it.”

Juniper leaned back against her desk slowly. Her back arched seductively as she drew her bottom lip between her teeth.

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