Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(38)

Natalie smiled at this, not a shred of jealousy lurking in eyes.

“At twenty-two I moved to San Francisco and briefly dated three other women before I met Samantha. She was the most serious of any relationship I’d had; we were together for about a year. But it ended badly. She knew there was something I wasn’t telling her—of course she knew—so in the absence of truth, filled in her own fact: that I was a cheat and a liar. That was a year ago.”

He watched her absorb this as he set a bowl of creamy soup before her.

“Did you love her?” Natalie asked gently.

“No,” Julian said. “I thought I might, given time, and for a while I mourned the break-up for just that reason. But then I met you and I realized how shallow my feelings for Samantha were, how artificial. I don’t mean to speak ill of her, but trying to love her took effort. Falling for you was the easiest, most effortless thing in the world.”

Natalie’s cheeks colored again and her eyes shone. “Thank you for saying that. And I know you mostly did to make me feel okay about telling my sordid story. So thank you for that too.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Julian said. “Or, when you’re ready—”

“I want to,” she said, shifting on her seat. “I just…need to.”

“Okay,” he said gently. “Then I’m listening.”

She smiled briefly and took a long pull on her wine. “Before you, I’ve been with one man. I think I told you before…or at least babbled about it the night we…we almost…” She waved her hands. “Anyway, when my parents died I was eighteen and received some insurance money. Not a lot, but enough. We’d lived in San Diego but I couldn’t stay. Too many memories. So I drove north, stopping in coastal towns for weeks or months at a time, trying to find one that fit. But I was aimless. Lost.”

Julian could easily conjure her on that journey; alone, grief-stricken, and so very young. His chest tightened.

“I stayed in Santa Barbara the longest, working as a waitress in a restaurant by the beach. For two years, I lived there, hardly talking to anyone, all my time divided between working and reading on the beach. It sounds sort of like a vacation when I put it that way, but it really wasn’t. It was…terrible. I’ve never been so lonely.”

Julian longed to go to her, but she wouldn’t want his sympathy. She’s stronger than she realizes.

“I felt like a child wandering on her own,” Natalie said. “And being a child was too painful. Children have parents to take care of them. I felt like I needed to shed the first half of my life, my home, my city…I thought if I did that, just cut it all off, like a rotting limb, the pain would fall away with it.”

She sighed and gave a kind of half-smile. “I wanted to shed my virginity because it was part of the old life, which is kind of sad when I think about it. I wish I hadn’t. I wish that I waited.” She glanced up at him. “For you.”

Julian felt the ache in his heart grow heavier. “I’m honored,” he said quietly and watched her blush and look away.

“But that boy…he was kind,” she said quickly. “More so than I had counted on. He wanted to see me again, take me out for a proper date. But no…I thought I would know everything there was to know about him in a week. I left Santa Barbara two days later.”

She huffed a breath. “So that’s the extent of my sexual escapades. A brief one-night stand and not much else. I never had a boyfriend in high school, just boys that were friends. I wanted you to know so that you don’t confuse any hesitancy on my part with a lack of…um, desire…for you. Because I have a lot… of…that.” She covered her eyes with her hand. “Stop me at any time if my eloquent seduction is too much for you.”

Julian burst out laughing and came around the counter to slip his arms around her waist and kiss her. She tasted of wine and below that, her own addictive sweetness he couldn’t get enough of. “Everything about you is an eloquent seduction.”

Her fingers wound into his hair and she drew him close for another kiss that had the potential to send them back to the bedroom until she pulled away. “Our food is going to get cold and it smells too good to ignore a second time. And I want to hear about your life, about your mother. And your father. Whatever you feel you want to tell me. Maybe,” she smiled coyly, “a little bit about the books?”

“Curious about that, are you?”

“Eh. I only have about a billion questions. No biggie.”

“The story of my early life is how Above came to be written. Will that suffice for now?” She nodded dumbly, and he could see the weight of his revelation striking her again, erasing her levity. “It’s okay,” he told her. “After I’m done, it won’t seem so strange.”

She smiled faintly. “Says you…Rafael Mendón.”





Chapter Seventeen


They retreated to the couch. Julian smiled to see Natalie tuck her legs under her, an attentive expression on her face, but he hesitated. He mentally scrolled over his own life history, organized it, and wondered how painful it was going to be to bring it into the light of day. It doesn’t matter, he realized. Natalie’s owed every truth and my mother deserves to be remembered. But his story started with his father. He took a long pull of wine and then began.