“You got it just in the nick of time. They close down for the season this weekend. What drink did you get for yourself?”
“The same thing.”
Her eyes lit up. “You like it, too? My brothers think it’s too sugary.”
“I’ve never had it. But I’m digging sweet things lately.” Their eyes connected with the heat of a blazing sun. Why couldn’t he stop himself from saying shit like that around her? He was going to hurt her if he continued this. He forced himself to look away, breaking their connection. “We should eat before it gets cold.”
They sat on the couch, so close their legs brushed as they ate, and she told him about her busy day. Her sweet scent surrounded him, making it impossible for him to think of anything but her. He loved the way her voice rose and fell with her excitement, the adorable way she picked the sausages off her slice of pizza and popped them into her mouth one by one before eating the rest, and how her eyes widened every time she took a sip of her drink. Even the cadence of her laughter had become different, more alluring.
She looked over, catching him staring. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because everything you do is uniquely you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. The way you eat, the things you say, the way you see the good in everything and everybody. You’re just different.”
“I like that I’m different. Does it bother you?”
“No, Pix, it’s all good. I wish I knew how you could go through what you went through with cancer, and Jock and Archer fighting for all those years, and come out on the other side of it all without being jaded or bitter.”
“I think it’s because of having cancer.”
“You were so little. Three? Four? Do you remember it?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I was three when they found the tumor and removed my kidney. I don’t remember any of the bad stuff, like the surgery or chemo treatments.”
“You didn’t have radiation, right? I think I remember my mom saying you didn’t.”
“No. I was lucky. They caught it early. It was stage two, and I had favorable histology, which basically means I had abnormal cells, but they weren’t as bad as they could have been. They got all the cancer out when they removed my kidney, so I didn’t need radiation. But I’ve heard stories about how scared everyone was, and as I got older, I noticed the way my family watched over me and treated me different from my brothers and sisters. I developed a lot of feelings based on that.”
“What kind of feelings?”
She set down the slice of pizza she was holding, and her brow furrowed.
“I’m sorry if that’s too personal of a question.”
“No, it’s not.” She met his gaze. “I want to tell you, but it might sound weird.”
“I don’t think anything you say is weird, Jules. Surprising sometimes, but not weird.” That earned him a sweet smile.
“It feels funny to say it out loud, but once I was old enough to process what I’d gone through and what my family went through because of me, I felt kind of guilty. Partially because when we were growing up, I got more, or maybe different, attention than my brothers and sisters got. I knew my parents had to watch my health more closely, but as a kid it still felt weird sometimes. I was jealous of my brothers and sisters because they didn’t have to worry about having only one kidney, or cancer coming back.”
“That must have been hard.”
“Kind of. The other thing is that when I was growing up, I didn’t have the memories that you or anyone older than me did about what I went through. But having cancer isn’t something other people forget about you, so it’s always there. Not in a bad way, but sometimes I get the sense that when people see me, in the back of their mind they’re thinking—Jules, the girl who had cancer.”
He wanted to hold her, to take the sadness in her eyes away, but that slippery slope held him back. “I don’t think that when I see you, but I understand why you feel that way. I think when people see me, the first thing they think about is that I lost my leg.”
She leaned against his side with a sigh. “Not me. My first thought is usually that I wish I could help you be happier.”
The emotions he’d been trying to ignore billowed out, and he put his arm around her, pulling her closer. He needed to go with what he felt, just for now, just for Jules, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “It may not seem like it, but I appreciate everything you’ve done.”
“I know you do, even when you act like you don’t,” she said lightly. Then her tone turned more serious. “To be honest, the attention I got wasn’t the only reason I felt guilty when I was growing up. I hated making my family worry about me. My parents told me that Jock stayed by my side until I was fully recovered. He was only eleven, and when I think about how my being sick affected him, it breaks my heart.”
Her sorrow made his chest constrict, and he held her a little tighter against his side. “I have those same feelings, but you can’t carry that burden, Pix. You weren’t selfish. You were sick. Jock and the rest of your family knew that. We all did.”
“Then you can’t feel guilty, either. You couldn’t help your injury.”
“I know, but we’re not talking about me.”
She looked up at him with that trusting smile, and the urge to lower his lips to hers returned with a vengeance. It would be so easy to pour everything he was feeling into what he knew would be an incredible kiss with the sweetest girl around. But she wasn’t the kind of girl he could hook up with just for fun, and the hell of it was that what he was feeling was much bigger than a hookup. But how could he do that to her when his life was up in the air? When she and her family trusted him?
Struggling to tamp down his desires, he reached for his drink, putting space between them. “You were so little when you went through all of that.” Memories of when he’d seen her for the first time after her surgery brought another rush of emotions, turning those sexual desires into a yearning to protect her. He had no idea what to do with all of the new feelings filling him up, but he did his best to talk around them. “Even back then you had a remarkable attitude. I’ll never forget when I went to see you after you were back home from the hospital. You put on a bright, hopeful smile, your eyes were wide and happy, always happy, and you kept asking if you could go to the beach.” He made his voice higher. “Beach now, Mama?” He laughed softly. “I remember wanting to get you there so badly, I painted you a picture of the view of Sunset Beach from the deck of the Bistro. I’m sure the painting is long gone by now, but I figured that way on the days you had treatments and couldn’t go, at least you could see it.”
JULES’S EMOTIONS WERE all over the place. She felt so close to Grant, when he’d kissed the top of her head, she’d thought he was going to kiss her on the lips, too, and now she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“You painted that? It’s not gone, Grant. It’s hanging in my bedroom, and it’s my absolute favorite picture. That painting is the reason I love Sunset Beach so much. I can’t believe I didn’t realize you painted it. I’m sure my parents must have told me when I was little, but I guess I forgot. Now that I know, I can see the similarities in my head between that painting and the ones you painted when I was a teenager. That picture means so much to me. When I moved into my apartment above the shop, Levi helped me fix it up, and he told me that after my chemo treatments, I used to come home to rest, and I would just lie there staring at that picture. Jock was always there, and Levi said that sometimes he’d lie with us and they’d make up stories so I could pretend we were at the beach.”