Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(26)
“How uh…how did your date go?”
“Not well, thanks in no small part to your incessant phone calls.” Julian’s blue steel gaze could have frozen boiling water, but David had his defense planned and prepared. “What the hell were you doing, David?”
“I know,” David said, all contriteness and regret, humbling himself like a groveling dog. “I feel terrible. I absolutely loathed interrupting your date, but the credit card company has never been so insistent before.”
Julian’s rigid posture didn’t bend an inch. “It was humiliating.”
Music to my ears. David’s face was a perfect mask of agony. “Oh Christ, Julian, I’m so sorry. I thought that might happen but I worried they’d cut you off and you’d be more humiliated trying to use the card and be denied with—Natalie, was it?—standing right there.” He held up his hands in a helpless gesture. “Lesser of two evils.”
Julian remained stony for a moment more and then released himself from the prison of his rigid stance and sank onto the couch, his back to David, his voice ripe with defeat. “I can’t lay all the blame at your feet. Or any of it, really. I thoroughly wrecked the date at the end. Until then, it had been exquisite.”
David bit back his smile of triumph. “What happened?” he asked. “If you want to talk, I mean…”
“What the hell am I doing?” Julian said. “Five months. Five months and I finally work up the nerve to ask her out and then I spoil it with more hesitancy and awkwardness.”
David sat in the chair across from Julian, keeping his face open and sympathetic. “You’re being cautious. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Cautious?” Julian snorted. “I’m being insanely defensive. She’s going to think I’m a lunatic, if she doesn’t already.”
“Julian, in light of what happened with Samantha—”
“This is different,” he snapped. “I think Natalie cares for me. I know she does. But I’m too pessimistic to believe she feels as strongly for me as I do for her.”
“You feel…strongly about her?” David’s stomach began to twist the triumph of his interference right out of him.
Julian hung his head between his hands. “I’m in love with her.”
David was proud he managed not to flinch, given how Julian’s words slapped him.
“But I’ve likely ruined it.”
A ray of hope. “What happened? I mean…aside from my terribly uncouth interruption.”
“I wanted to tell her everything. I owe it to her, before we...start anything. But she loves the writing so much…” Julian carved his hands through his hair. “Guess who her favorite author is? And not her favorite the way someone prefers blue over red, or cats over dogs. She feels spiritually connected to…him. I thought if I told her the truth she’d feel trapped in the car with a madman, and I just…I bumbled everything. I couldn’t speak. I’m supposed to be so deft with words,” his voice dripped sarcasm, “and I couldn’t find any to properly explain myself. So she left—escaped, really—and I don’t blame her.”
David hadn’t heard much after, I wanted to tell her everything. After those words, his blood had turned to sludge in his veins. “The secret keeps you safe,” he managed. “You know that.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. I feel as though some horrid twist of fate is testing me and the vow I made to my mother. I’m telling you, David, I was ready to throw it all away.” Julian sighed. “But I have to finish the book. It’s nearly done and it needs to be completed at that café, with her.”
David had never pretended to understand Julian’s artistic process and he never cared to. His books were good—astonishing, if one believed the critics—and he was glad for that. They assured Julian more money with each publication. The money, invested properly, assured David of continued employment. To him, the novels—which he’d never read—were the means by which he could stay close to Julian, and for that reason alone, he cherished them in a way no one could understand.
“Why there?” David asked. “Why not just work in your library, free of distractions…?”
“It’s just…how it is,” Julian said. “The book demands it. If I were to leave the café, the whole structure would fall apart. If it didn’t have Natalie’s presence it would wither and die like a plant shoved in a closet. I can’t let it perish like that.” He looked at David. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
David sat back in his chair. This was more complicated than he had thought. The fact Julian thought he was in love with this silly girl was surmountable; he could poison his thoughts against her given time, as he had with Samantha. But Julian was caught up in some ridiculous notion that his writing was connected to Natalie, as if he couldn’t find some other dingy café in the city to write in. What possible difference could one make over another? David couldn’t fathom it.
“I’m happy for you that your book is going well. But maybe it’s best if you give yourself a break from that girl and try to finish it here. A change in perspective might do you some good.”
Julian rose and rested his hand on his shoulder. David’s skin tingled pleasurably at the touch.