“It’s no problem and thank you—”
“I know you really didn’t want this sandwich.” He placed the plate on the island. “I know what you were doing. So, I’m saying thank you and I mean it.”
She opened her mouth, but what could she say? Besides, she really didn’t want to talk about this or what she found in his mother’s room. She had questions. Many.
Julia didn’t get a chance to ask a single one.
He pivoted around and left the kitchen without saying another word, leaving her there with the basket of his mother’s items. Her gaze fell to the plate, appetite completely gone, and that was a shame, because it looked amazing.
She glanced down at her basket and then she shivered, and it had nothing to do with the sudden coldness in the room and everything to do with the brothers.
Chapter 27
Lucian’s sneakers were pounding on the treadmill when Godsmack’s “I Stand Alone” was cut off by Gabe’s incoming call. He’d lost track of how much time he’d spent running. All he knew was that this was the third time he’d heard this song come on and he’d been down in the home gym since he left Julia in the kitchen.
Hell, his head wouldn’t shut down. Thinking too damn much. His sister. His cousin. Lawrence. Dev. Julia. He was trying to run the damn thoughts out of his head.
Punching the stop button, he snatched his phone out of the holder and pulled out the earbuds as he rode the belt to the end of the treadmill.
“How’s Baton Rouge?” he answered, hopping off the treadmill.
“Ah, it’s been different,” Gabe replied, and Lucian frowned at the sound of his brother’s voice. It was off. “How was the lunch yesterday? I would’ve called, but time got away from me.”
“It went okay. Not sure if Maddie responded or not, but I think it was good. Probably will have Daniel come over again.” Walking over to where he’d dropped a towel earlier, he swiped it off the ground. He didn’t think Gabe needed to know that Julia had taken things out of their mother’s room. “So, what’s going on in Baton Rouge?”
Gabe laughed, and that didn’t even sound right. “Shit, man . . . I don’t even know where to start, but I’m going to be down here a few more days.”
Frowning, he wiped up the sweat and then tossed the towel into the nearby hamper. Unease filled him. “Talk to me.”
“Emma . . . she was in a really bad car accident,” his brother said.
“Shit.” He planted a hand into the wall, back bowed. “I can be down there in a few—”
“No. No, you can’t. You got Madeline and Julia to worry with. You can’t leave them with Dev,” Gabe cut in. “You need to be there. And I need to be here.”
His brother was right, but Lucian didn’t like the sound of his brother’s voice. “How bad is bad, Gabe?”
There was a long moment of silence and then his brother said, “She’s in a coma. They don’t think she’s going to wake up.”
“Man, I don’t know what to say.” Lucian rested his forehead on his bicep. No matter what Gabe claimed, Lucian knew that the feelings he had for Emma had ran deep. “That’s why her parents called you down, so you . . .”
So Gabe could say goodbye.
Lucian couldn’t even bring himself to say that.
“That and, uh, there’s something else. I don’t even know how to word this. Fuck,” Gabe groaned, and the hairs rose all over Lucian’s body. “I haven’t even wrapped my head around it.”
Straightening, Lucian pushed off the wall as he eyed the shoulder and leg press machines. “What’s going on?”
The deafening silence told Lucian that whatever Gabe was about to say was going to be a bomb—it was going to change everything.
“I . . . I have a kid,” Gabe said, his voice hoarse. “I have a son.”
After getting Madeline to bed, Julia gathered up the painting that she had finished that evening, a little after dinner. It was definitely a child’s face—a fair-skinned and haired child. Julia placed the painting in the closet, along with the rest.
When she returned to Madeline’s side, she smothered a yawn as she fixed the bedspread. “I found some of your mother’s old albums,” she told the quiet woman. “I was thinking we could look through them tomorrow. What do you think?”
Madeline’s gaze shifted to her.
Julia just about fell over flat. Madeline was looking at her in direct response to a question. That wasn’t much, but that was . . . that was something that didn’t happen often. “You would like that? I found about three albums. I’ll bring them with me in the morning.” She drew in a deep breath. “I found some other stuff, too.”
The woman stared back at her for a moment and then she tilted her head away. Her eyes closed.
Stepping back from the bed, she checked the doors and then left Madeline’s room. Richard was waiting for her outside her door with a silver tray in his hands and the scent of roasted meat emanating from it. She took the tray and thanked him. After changing into more comfy clothes, meaning leggings and a loose shirt, she delved into the food. The chicken dish was amazing and after eating her dinner, she placed the basket of stuff from the mother’s bedroom on the bed, and started rooting through the albums.
The de Vincents were cute as kids. Julia couldn’t but linger on the photos of Lucian. Even as a young boy, he had that mischievous grin and glint his eyes. She closed one album and then glanced at the clock. It was still pretty early in the evening.
Nibbling on her finger, she smoothed her other hand over her knee. Was Lucian in his room? Did he expect her—
Nope.
She wasn’t going to think twice about any of that. Last night was amazing. Hell, she was actually a little sore, because seriously, it had been a real long time. It was almost like regrowing a hymen.
Throwing one leg off the bed, she glanced at the door. Too many questions cycled over and over in her head. She wanted to know what Lucian and Devlin had been talking about earlier, but she also . . . she also wanted to make sure Lucian was okay.
She hadn’t seen him since the kitchen. She didn’t even know if he was in the house.
That need to comfort him probably made her incredibly stupid. Lucian didn’t come across as someone who wanted comforting and she wasn’t sure her desire to do so was purely out of a need to make sure he was all right.
Julia was burning for him.
She rose from the bed, pacing restlessly in her room. Her mind drifted to the things he’d done last night. The way he touched her, the way he—
Anyway . . .
Pushing thoughts of Lucian out of her mind, she plopped back on the bed and picked up the journal. Carefully opening it, she discovered it was a diary and a sketchbook. There were pages where their mother wrote about what she did that day and then others filled with intricate, detailed doodles ranging from roses to portraits of people Julia had never seen before. Some pages had dates on the top. Others didn’t, but from skimming, Julia figured out that this was the journal used right before she died. Several regular pieces of paper were folded up and stuck between other pages. Julia pulled one out, feeling like a creep as she opened it.
It was a computer printout of what appeared to be old text messages or possibly some kind of chat. There were no names. Just bubbles of text.
I know she doesn’t want us seeing each other anymore, but I don’t care. I love you and we will be together. They can’t stop us.
They’re going to try.
We just need to be more careful.
Maybe we should just tell them.
Give them a chance to accept it.
Are you serious? They’d kill us. For real.
What in the world was this? Messages between their mother and someone else? Or was it two unknown people? Didn’t take a forensic expert to think it looked like someone was having an affair.
She thought about the note she’d found in Madeline’s bedroom, among the old books and magazines.
Based on what she knew of the brothers’ father, she wouldn’t be surprised if the mother had someone on the side. Their father sounded like a real jerk.
Cringing nonetheless, Julia folded the paper up and placed it back in the diary. She kept flicking back through the thick pages, stopping on an entry dated December ninth. The passage was written in cursive, the blue ink had begun to fade.