What about your pain? her heart wailed.

Julie ignored it. It was too late for that. And she deserved whatever she got.

Chapter Thirteen

The date had been a colossal mistake.

Not just the man. Although he’d certainly been a mistake too.

Somehow she’d managed to hold it together throughout an overpriced five-course meal at one of the city’s new celebrity-chef restaurants. A place that even she wouldn’t have been able to get reservations at had her date not been the chef’s cousin.

His name was Keith, and he was perfectly nice. Actually, better than nice. He was downright charming and completely gorgeous. He had that floppy blond hair that only strong-featured men could pull off without looking juvenile, and his smile was wide and white. He even told good jokes.

But her laugh had been brittle. Her smile strained. Her appetite forced.

She would have killed to be curled up on Mitchell’s couch with a baseball game and mediocre takeout.

What was wrong with her?

When Keith suggested they hit up the nearby Brandy Library for a nightcap, she’d meant to say yes. Instead, she blurted out what she’d been thinking ever since she’d gotten on the train that morning for work: “I want to go home.”

Keith gave her a knowing wink and paid the bill without a word. She was aware of what he was thinking: that it was all part of the game, that cutting the date short would leave him panting for more.

Hadn’t she played that very game with Mitchell just weeks before?

Only Mitchell hadn’t played. Her chest tightened. Mitchell.

“So can I see you again?” Keith asked as he set a hand on her waist and escorted her out of the restaurant’s waterfall foyer. Julie waited for the zip, the sizzle she’d felt when Mitchell had put his hand in that same spot and sent fireworks up her spine.

Nothing.

“That’d be nice,” she heard herself say as she lifted her hand to hail a taxi. “Call me?”

“Absolutely, babe.”

Babe. Blech.

Julie lunged for the door handle as soon as the cab pulled to a stop in front of her, but Keith moved too fast, gently grabbing her hand and sliding another hand up her back. His eyes fixed on her lips, and for a moment the old Julie felt a little thrill of triumph. Landed this one in your sleep, didn’t ya, old girl?

But the new Julie felt like barfing.

She didn’t know this man. She certainly didn’t want to be kissing him.

“Goodnight, Keith,” she said, giving him a firm shove on the chest. She tried for a saucy wink, but she assumed from his puzzled frown that it might have looked more like a grand mal seizure.

Julie gave the driver her address without glancing back at Keith. She hadn’t bungled a date that badly in years. She waited for the stab of regret and the sense of failure.

Nothing.

The restaurant was mercifully close to her apartment, and within minutes Julie was throwing a twenty at her cab driver, not bothering to wait for her change.

I need to get inside. Why had she thought she’d be able to handle this? Today of all days. A strangled sob escaped. She should have listened to Riley and Grace and given herself the day off. She always took June 30 off. Off from work, off from dating. A day off from living. It was the one day of the year where Julie allowed herself to wallow.

She fumbled through her purse for her keys. Crap. The sheen of tears made the contents of her purse one big blur. She was totally about to lose her shit in the middle of the sidewalk.

She thought of calling Riley and Grace, but she was determined to stick it out alone. She always went it alone. No need to burden anyone else with her baggage.

“Julie.”

The voice was so unexpected that her shaking hands dropped the purse to the ground, sending everything scattering.

She knelt down without looking at him. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been calling you. Your phone’s been going straight to voicemail all day. I’ve been worried.”

“Did it occur to you that it went to voicemail for a reason? That I didn’t want to talk?” Her nasty tone was intended to scare him off. Go away. Don’t see me like this. Nobody’s allowed to see me like this.

But instead of walking away or snapping back, Mitchell crouched beside her to help her pick up her purse as though he hadn’t noticed her waspish tone and bitchy words. He scooped up her keys before she could snatch them and held them out of reach. “Let’s get you inside.”

She wanted to dig her heels in. Wanted to tell him that he had no place here. That she didn’t need him. Didn’t want him. But when he took her hand and gently pulled her forward, she let him. And when he opened the door to her building and to her apartment and ushered her inside, she let him do that too.

And when she collapsed into tears the second the door had closed behind them, she let him take her in his arms, holding her tightly as though he could put her back together again.

Maybe he could.

Julie had no concept of how long she sobbed on his shoulder, one of his big palms moving over her back in soothing strokes while the other cradled her damp face to his neck.

Eventually her wet sobs turned to dry hiccups, and, like the kindest of friends, he washed her face with a warm washcloth and rummaged through her drawers until he found an oversized T-shirt and her ratty boxers.

Gentle hands peeled off her tight, slinky first-date dress and dropped the soft shirt over her head, not making a single comment about the sexiness of the dress.

She stood there like an exhausted child as he pulled the covers back and tucked her gently into bed. Julie tried to say thank you. Tried to say she was sorry. Nothing came out but a dry croak.

“I’ll get you some water,” he whispered, his hands playing with the tips of her hair before disappearing to the kitchen.

Julie closed her eyes, which were so dry they wanted to crack, and curled up on her side. It was like this every year. Every year she told herself that this would be the year she wouldn’t cry. That this would be the year she’d handle it like an adult. This was not to be that year.

Although it did mark one very unexpected first: it was the first time she hadn’t gone it alone.

Mitchell came back into the room, and she eagerly accepted the water, its cool wetness easing the rasp of her throat. He watched her drink and then quietly took the empty glass from her, setting it on the nightstand as though she were a sick child needing to be coddled. And maybe for tonight she was.

She waited for the questions to start.

What was that about? PMS?

Want to talk about it?

She didn’t. She didn’t talk about it with anyone, not even Riley and Grace.

But the questions didn’t come. He just quietly watched her, his blue eyes silently asking what he wanted to know. Stay or go?

She should tell him to go. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

Instead she reached out her hand, letting the tips of her fingers brush his.

Stay.

Wordlessly he stripped down to his undershirt and boxers and crawled into bed behind her. He drew her back against his firm chest, the front of his thighs cradling the backs of hers. A tiny sigh of contentment slipped out, feeling as though it had been ripped from the deepest, most private part of her.

It’s not like she hadn’t slept over with a guy before. She had. Once.

But never before had she slept with a man without sex. This was the first time that cuddling had been for comfort instead of post-coital habit. Julie was surprised by how right it felt. She’d always thought that if she let someone try to take care of her, it would feel like pity.

Instead it felt like she’d found a sense of home in someone else.

The last time she’d felt that was twenty years ago today, when her mom had lovingly pulled Julie’s hair into its little-girl ballerina bun and sent her off with her ballet carpool, with the promise that she and Daddy and Addie would be watching her from the audience.

It was a promise her mom hadn’t kept. The police had shown up instead.

Every year since then, on the anniversary of her family’s death, Julie had spent as much of the day and night as possible alone, determined that nobody would ever lure her into a sense of false promise.

Rationally she knew, of course, that it wasn’t her mother’s fault that she hadn’t kept her promise. The car accident hadn’t been anyone’s fault, really. But rationality didn’t stand a chance against self-protection.