After the Kiss (22 page)

Read After the Kiss Online

Authors: Lauren Layne

“Yeah, thanks,” she said in a small voice. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”

Mitchell straightened, his body going on high alert. He knew where this was going. “I don’t want to talk about her. Not with you. Not with anyone.”

Grace sighed. “I know. I know. And I can’t say I blame you. I should have stopped the stupid undercover-girlfriend idea before it even started. But you have to know, you meant
something to her.”

He snorted. “Yeah, another rung on her career ladder.”

“Stop,” she snapped. “You can be mad and you can be hurt—”

“I’m not hurt,” he interrupted sharply.
Jesus, that’s the last thing I need
. One more person thinking he was slinking around like a lovesick swain.

“Well,
she
is,” Grace said firmly. “She’s dying inside.”

“Yeah, a guilty conscience can be a bitch.”

Grace gave a long-suffering sigh. “Okay, I can see this was probably a mistake. And it’s really not my place. But …”

She pulled a rolled-up magazine out of her bag and tapped it against her palm. Grace bit her lip and looked at him nervously.

His eye caught the telltale image of a high-heeled shoe on the spine of the magazine and he let out a harsh laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Is that it?”

Grace gave a weak smile. “Our August issue. It won’t be out on stands for a few days, but I thought you should be the first to read it.”

The very thought made him nauseous. “So she wrote it. She actually fucking wrote it.”

He hated that the knowledge burned a hole in his gut. Hated that he’d been holding out hope that she’d cared enough about what happened to keep it private. That deep down, she’d meant what she’d said about him being more than a story.

“She wrote about you,” Grace said softly. “But not in the way you think.”

This was bullshit. He didn’t care what kind of pretty words she used to describe her fucked-up game. His personal life was splayed all over a brainless women’s magazine, probably sandwiched between an article on Botox and one on the G-spot.

“I think you should leave,” he said, trying to keep his tone level.

Grace nodded, gathering her bag and taking another sip of her beer. “I should. But I’m leaving the magazine.”

“Great, I’ve been running low on toilet paper.”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, resting a protective hand on the glossy cover. “My best friend’s heart is between these pages. You may not owe anything to her, and I know what she did to you was wrong. But you owe it to yourself to hear her side. It may give you some peace. And need I remind you that you’re hardly an innocent party in all this? What makes what she did so
different from what you did?”

I loved her. I was going to call the bet off
.

Grace chugged the rest of her beer before slamming the bottle with force back on the counter and marching to the door. He didn’t see her out. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the damned magazine.

Instinct demanded that he throw it away. Even if Julie had managed to spin a pretty story and had withheld his name, it didn’t change the fact that everything they’d shared had been a sham. The article would be too.

Grabbing another beer from the fridge, he started to head toward the couch, away from the magazine. Away from all reminders of
her
.

Then a headline caught his eye: “Pieces of a Broken Heart.”

Surely that wasn’t her story. That couldn’t be Julie’s article. But Grace’s words echoed in his ear.
She’s dying inside
.

Don’t touch it, man. Do. Not. Touch. It
. Mitchell reached out a hesitant hand. Fiddled with the corner of the cover.

And then he sat down and began to read.

Chapter Twenty

As if Julie needed more proof that her once cheerful, predictable life was now turned upside down, she was running.

Willingly. On a Friday night.

She should be out on the town, living it up the way Julie Greene was expected to do. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have options. Keith had called for another date. Riley and Grace had begged her to join them for dinner. Even Camille had wanted to take her for drinks to celebrate. Sales numbers for
Stiletto
’s August issue were in, and true to Camille’s prediction, it was one of their best-selling issues to date, even though it had been only four days since it hit the stands.

Still, it wasn’t
all
good news. The feedback was starting to come in, and some of the readers were let down. After Allen’s
Tribune
article, they’d expected a juicer story. They’d wanted a tabloid-worthy exposition of what it was like to seduce a man into a relationship for the sake of a story, only to find out he didn’t want you in the first place.

Instead they’d gotten a love letter about heartache.

One columnist for a local paper had called her story classy, brave, and utterly dull. The
New York Tattler
thought she’d stolen the story from an eleventh grader’s diary. And then there was Allen Carsons’s follow-up article. He’d accused her of being a first-class swindler who’d resorted to playing the victim upon being outsmarted by his own “superior journalism.”

Julie ran faster, her breath coming in sharp gasps. Swindler, her ass. She’d poured her heart and soul into that article. She’d held nothing back.

And he hadn’t called.

Had he even read it? She suspected that the control freak in him would want to know what she’d said about him.

But the Mitchell who had stared at her that last day?
That
Mitchell had been done with her. For good.

Julie swore as she nearly tripped on a root. Maybe running in Central Park at dusk hadn’t been the best plan. She slowed her pace to a jog so that she could better see where she was going.

The breakneck sprint hadn’t accomplished what she’d hoped, anyway. She still couldn’t
stop thinking about him.

Damn it, it was supposed to have gotten
easier
after writing the article, but she still couldn’t seem to go five minutes without checking her phone, desperate to see the one message that never came.

Still, the actual writing process had been therapeutic. Not only because she’d had a chance to spill her guts, but because she had hoped that it would help some other lovesick girl along the way.

Love is not a game, ladies. Treat it like one, and you’re bound to lose
.

Everyone talks about the rewards of finding that one person. Nobody warns you about the pain of losing him
.

She shook her head to clear it. Her own words had been running on repeat in her mind, and she just wanted to think about something else, anything else. But it was everywhere she turned. Riley had deemed her ballsy for spilling her guts. Grace had called her gracious. But right now she felt stupid. She’d told her story to strangers, and the one person who mattered didn’t give a damn.

Julie slowed to a walk and punched her hands into her hips as she gasped at the muggy summer air and fought back the tears.

Mitchell, I miss you
.

Julie walked until her breathing returned to normal, but the anguished feeling didn’t leave. Running might have been a good idea, but running the exact same path she’d run with Mitchell that first day had not.

She kept seeing him with his easy pace ahead of her, glancing back to make sure she hadn’t fallen into the bushes or stolen someone’s bicycle. She pictured the teasing smile that was completely at odds with his stuffy image and high-tech running gear.

She pictured him waiting on the bench, ready with a hot dog and water bottle. The memory was so clear, so poignant that for a moment she really did see him. Saw the bench, saw Mitchell—

Julie stopped in her tracks.

Blinked. Blinked again. Squinted and crept closer.

It wasn’t a memory.

It was Mitchell.

Except this time, there was no teasing smile of welcome.

There was, however, a
Stiletto
magazine by his side.

He’d read it.

The heartbeat that had just barely returned to normal sped up to triple time as she slowly approached, her eyes locked on his, desperate for a sign of what he was feeling. Was he pissed? Pleased?

Did he still love her? Had he
ever
loved her?

But his blue eyes betrayed nothing. So afraid to hope that she could barely breathe, Julie wordlessly sat on the bench beside him.

She ordered herself to speak.
Hi. Hello. I’m sorry. I love you
.

Instead she said nothing. They weren’t touching, but she could feel the warmth from his hip just inches from her own, and she longed to lean in, just for a moment.

“You read it?” she asked when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

He nodded once. “I wasn’t going to, but Grace brought it over. Came at me like a woman on a mission.”

Julie gave a tiny smile. “I can imagine. I think she figures that since she can’t fix her own love life, she’ll interfere in someone else’s.”

“Yeah, she mentioned things with Greg ended badly. How’s she doing?”

Julie hitched her heel up on the bench and tightened laces that didn’t need tightening as she wondered why they were talking about Grace instead of them.

Still, Grace was a safe topic, so …

“She’s all right,” Julie replied. “Actually … no. She’s a wreck. Says she’s going ‘off men.’ ”

Mitchell turned to look at her. “Off men. As in she’s playing for the other team?”

Julie let out a little laugh. “No. Or at least, not that she’s told me. She’s just declaring a boycott on romance. She’s angling for a year’s sabbatical, but Riley and I are trying to talk her down to six months.”

He fell silent for several moments. “And you? Are you going off men?”

Depends on the man
.

But she didn’t say it.

She’d already risked enough of her heart in that article. She wasn’t about to go running
off her mouth on top of it.

Not until she’d heard what he’d had to say.

She dodged his question with one of her own. “How’d you know I’d be out running?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you were doing? Running? It looks more like you’re dying.”

She cut him a glance.

“Right,” he said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “It was just a hunch, you know … that you’d come back to run here.”

“And you knew it would be today?” she asked skeptically.

He didn’t meet her eyes, and she watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “I’ve um … I’ve been coming here for the past couple days, actually. Waiting for you.”

Julie’s stomach flipped.

“That’s very stalkerish of you,” she said softly.

And very sweet
.

He nodded awkwardly before handing her a foil-wrapped package. Wordlessly she opened it, and when she saw what was inside, she gave a watery smile.

It was a hot dog.

Just like on that first day. No, not
exactly
like the first day. No relish this time. For some reason, that one small change made her feel like weeping more than anything else. It represented all of the nuances that changed a man from being just a guy to being
the
guy.

Although she could barely fathom the idea of eating, she took a bite of the hot dog, painfully aware that he was watching her chew.

“So all these days you’ve been waiting for me … is there something you wanted to discuss, or was it just a sit-in-awkward-silence type of deal?”

Please say something
.

He reached down to pick up the magazine by his side. Its cover was wrinkled and water-splattered. Either he’d dug it out of the garbage or he’d read it. Several times, from the looks of it.

Wordlessly he turned to a dog-eared page of the magazine—her article. Julie winced and looked away. Her article in his hands was the ultimate vulnerability. As though he just had to make a fist in order to crush her.

Hell, this man could crush her with a
word
.

And then he began to read.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing something I’ve done an awful lot of. I’ve fallen in love.

Then I went and did something crazy. Something wonderful. I stayed in love. I stayed past the first kiss, the first inside joke, the first fight.

But I did it all wrong. I played it like a game, and I broke someone’s heart.

And broke my own in the process.

Julie blinked against a new rush of tears. Writing the words had been hard enough. Hearing them from his mouth …

“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Please.”

But he read on as though he hadn’t heard her protest.

Does it hurt like hell? Yes. Do I miss him more than anything? Yes.

But would I go back and fall in love with this guy all over again, even knowing it would end badly?

Absolutely.

Because despite what I’ve been writing all these years, the best part of love isn’t about the giggles or the flirting or even the toe-curling first kiss.

The best part comes after all that. It’s that realization that he knows you can’t cook but pretends to let you try. It’s hating baseball but watching it anyway because it makes him smile.

Real love—the kind that matters—is giving your heart to someone even after he tries to hand it back.

And it’s knowing that you’d give him your heart over and over again. If only he’d ask.

Mitchell’s fingers flexed slightly around the pages as he broke off.

They sat in strained silence for several moments, and Julie hardly dared to breathe.

Hardly dared to hope.

“Did you mean it?” he asked finally, his voice sounding gravelly, not at all like the smooth, confident Mitchell she’d come to know.

“I meant it,” she said softly. “The only way it could have been more heartfelt is if they’d splattered my blood over the page.”

“A lovely visual,” he said casually.

She tried to roll her eyes at his lame attempt at humor, but instead she watched as her hand found his on the park bench. “Mitchell. Would you … do you … just … please,
please
tell me if I’ll get another chance.”

“Another chance at what, Julie?”

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