Free Chasing Julia (Rhode Island Romance #2) by Sophia Renny Page B

me?”
    He shook his head
at her disbelief. “Come on, Julia. What do you think? You’re telling me you
never noticed the way I was looking at you?”
    Her brow knitted.
“No. I only remember you avoiding me, pulling away from me. I just thought it
was because of the mom thing.”
    “No. I never thought
of you as a mom or even as a sister. I was embarrassed about how I thought of
you then. My body was changing. I was too ashamed to talk with Joe about it.”
He tugged on his earlobe, looking a little abashed. “I got a hard-on
practically every time you were close by. Even if you weren’t in the room at
all, and I just got a scent of you. I couldn’t control my reaction. One night,
I got up to get a glass of water and saw you and Joe making out on the living
room couch. He had his hands under your shirt. That visual made things worse.
Every time I jerked off, I was thinking of you, the way your face had looked
when he touched you. And that made me angry because you were Julia, my
childhood friend, my brother’s girlfriend. I shouldn’t have been thinking of you
that way.” He shook his head. “It was all so confusing and complicated. I
didn’t want you around, and I wanted to be near you at the same time. So I
lashed out. I was able to control myself better as I grew older, but there were
still times when I’d catch myself lusting after you. I think antagonizing you
was a way of distancing myself from those feelings.”
    Julia’s heart was
pounding hard, her emotions in turmoil for the umpteenth time that day as she
observed the myriad expressions flitting across Tony’s face while he made his
startling and frank confession. “I never knew…”
    “I’m glad you
didn’t. After Uncle Nick tore into me that day, and I watched you cry, I
started pushing those feelings down. I focused on making you smile. Making you
happy. You told me once that marrying my brother would make you the happiest
girl in the world. So that’s what I wanted for you, too.”
    She swallowed down
the rising lump in her throat. “I did say that, didn’t I.”
    She looked away
from him and gazed, unseeing, into the water. He was quiet for a while, too.
Then he cleared his throat. “So, what would make you the happiest girl in the
world now?”
    She pointed her toes
and swooshed them in the water. “I don’t think anyone could possibly be happy
all the time,” she said eventually. “It was kind of foolish of me to base all
my happiness on being with Joe. I never really thought much beyond our wedding
day, you know? That’s where the fairytales always ended, with the prince
carrying his new bride into the sunset.” She lifted her face to the sun again,
tamping down all emotions and sensations other than the feel of warm heat on
her skin. She smiled. “Real happiness comes in seconds and minutes—tiny moments
like this that you can store away in your memory and open up when you’re
feeling blue, you know what I mean?”
    “Yeah.” His voice
was rough. “I know what you mean.”
    She took a deep
breath and opened her eyes. She swiveled her gaze towards him. “Some of my
happiest memories from back then have you in them.”
    His toffee eyes
gleamed. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”
    She waved her arm
to indicate their surroundings. “This, of course. And the day you tried to
teach me how to surf. And that time you and I and Sylvie went quahogging on the
Cape.” She hesitated. “Joe wasn’t able to join us for most of those outings. I
wonder if things would’ve turned out differently if I’d had these kinds of
moments with him.”
    Something hard
flashed in his eyes. Whatever he might have said then was disrupted by a
tugging on one of the lines. “Here we go,” was all he said as he pulled the
line in.
    They caught six
more crabs before he called it a decent haul and tossed the leftover chicken
meat into the water. They packed up and trekked back to the truck. He put the
ice chest in the truck bed and gave the water a stir.