“I love him, Benj. I love him so damn much I can barely breathe, and I don’t know how to hold the entire feeling inside of me. And I get it now. I totally, completely get it. How you and Hallie could happen so fast and everything could change completely in almost no time at all.”
Ben grins at me. “Fucking crazy, isn’t it?”
“Sure is. But also, kind of amazing? He sees me, all the way through, and I didn’t realize how badly I needed to be seen. The way I love him? I didn’t think I was capable of loving like this. I know without one single doubt that I am going to love him for the rest of my life. He’s my other half.”
“Juliette.” I turn at Asher’s voice and see him leaning against the doorway to the living room, emotion swimming in his eyes as he looks at me.
“Shit,” I mutter. “How much of that did you hear?”
He doesn’t answer, just strides towards me and pulls me up off the couch, crashing his mouth to mine and kissing me like we are extremely alone, and probably naked, and not two feet from my brother, with my mom in the kitchen down the hall.
When we break apart, he holds onto me for an extra few seconds, pressing a kiss to my forehead and wrapping an arm around me as we both turn to the couch where Ben is sitting, leg propped on his opposite knee and arms spread over the back of the couch, a shit eating grin on his face.
I point to him. “You shut up. Like I haven’t caught you and Hallie making out in every corner of this house.”
“We’ve done a lot more than that in a lot of those corners.”
“Fucking gross, Ben. Why would you think I wanted that information?”
“Why would you think I wanted to see you making out with your…what is he exactly? Your boyfriend?”
“You know it,” Asher says, giving Ben a grin and a thumbs up. “We’re totally official. You can probably even see us kissing in the airport somewhere on the internet.”
Ben gives me a quizzical look.
I sigh. “I had to prove to him I don’t care about how famous he is and that I’m not going to run away just because some fan sticks a camera in my face, so I kissed him in the airport. Whatever. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“On the contrary, Juliette. It was a very, very big deal.”
“I agree with him,” Ben says. “Huge deal.”
I look back and forth between them. “I’m not sure I like the two of you being friends.”
“Too late, Jules. He’s one of us now.”
Asher pulls me tighter into his side. “Yeah, Juliette, I’m one of you now.”
He sure is, and I don’t hate it even a little bit.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Asher
After dinner, Julie and I walk down the street towards my house hand in hand, in comfortable silence. The sky is clear and the air is cold, and the winter night wraps itself around us, and I’m happy. I’m so fucking happy.
I have always loved this neighborhood, but I’m not sure I had a full grasp on how lonely I’ve been here until I walked into the Parkers’ house and was the opposite of that. Until Rachel hugged me like she’s known me forever and we baked a cake together and I chatted with Steven about the plans for a new development his company is building downtown and I made plans with Ben to get together with the guys and Julie was by my side all night. No one asked me about the team or even talked about football.
I was one of them, like Ben said. Important to them because I’m important to Julie, and I have never experienced that kind of easy acceptance, outside of my own family. My phone dings, interrupting my thoughts, and I pull it out of my pocket. The message preview on the screen pierces my bubble of contentment and has my stomach churning.
Coach
Can you be at the stadium tomorrow at 9 a.m.? Doc can see you then.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, my breath misting out in the frigid air.
“You okay?” Julie asks, stopping me with a tug on my hand.
“It’s my coach.” Julie knows I texted him earlier today when we got back, telling him my shoulder had been bothering me since the end of the season and that I wanted to get it checked out. With her encouragement, I left it at that. I felt weird about leaving out the anti-inflammatory injections, but she cut through my attack of conscience in her logical, matter-of-fact way. My shoulder is what it is regardless of how I’ve been medicating it for the past few years. The injections don’t change anything about what an MRI will show today. “He said the team doctor can see me tomorrow morning at nine.”
