One Weekend with the Billionaire novel Chapter 58

Stringer leaves, and I fix Julia a cup of warm tea trying to settle her nerves. I know she’s upset, but she has yet to tell me exactly what happened. I want to drive to Jeff Thompson’s apartment myself and punch that bastard in the face, and I don’t even know yet what’s gone on.

Julia sits on a couch in the room near the window overlooking the city. She is stunning, even in an old outfit I’m sure she’s been wearing all day as she cleaned up Jeff’s messes and did her best to make their apartment into a home, which is difficult to do under the best of circumstances. When your husband is an ungrateful bastard, I can’t even imagine how she gets out of bed in the morning.

After a few sips of her tea, she says, "I’m sorry to barge in on you in the middle of the night."

"Are you serious?" I ask, studying her from the chair across the room from her. "First of all, it’s hardly the middle of the night." It wasn’t even 9:00 yet. "And secondly, as I told you, I am always available for you, Julia."

She smiles at me, but I know she is still afraid that she’s interrupted something important. Nothing is as important as she is, though. I don’t ask if she wants to talk about what happened because I know she will tell me when she is ready.

"I didn’t think he was going to blow up," she says, gesturing wildly with her arm. Her other hand, the one holding the saucer with the teacup poised on top, shakes slightly. She sets it down on the coffee table in front of her. "But… I guess he had had enough. When he came home--late again--I went in the other room. I just couldn’t sit there and watch him eat cold food and complain to me about it being that way when it’s his fault for being so damn late!" She runs a hand through her hair, and I can see her fingers are trembling even more now. "Anyway, he came into the bedroom and started shouting at me. I shouted back." She looks away, sort of out the window, but not exactly. Her eyes are vacant, and I know she’s thinking about what happened. "Maybe I shouldn’t have. I… slapped him." She rests her forehead against her hand.

"He certainly deserved it," I tell her. She half chuckles, looks at me, and slowly shakes her head. I am assuming she’s never struck him before. I doubt she’s ever struck anyone before.

"And then we started arguing. He called me all sorts of names, and I told him that I knew everything that he’d been up to, everything that he’d done. I thought he was going to hit me, but then Mr. Stringer knocked on the door, and Jeff told him to go away. Until he heard his voice. Then, he realized he had to let him in. And while Jeff was talking to Mr. Stringer, I grabbed my things. I had never unpacked them." She looks down at her clothes, pulls on her oversized, faded pink sweater, as if she is thinking she looks unpresentable to me. "And I left." She shrugs, gives me a small, satisfied smile, and swipes at tears in her eyes.

"You did the right thing, Julia," I tell her, wanting to reach across the room and touch her, but I’m not sure she’s ready for that at the moment. I want to wrap her in my arms and carry her to the bedroom, but she is like a frightened kitten at the moment, and I can’t move too quickly or else I might scare her myself. I’m just thankful she had the courage to leave him. Now that she’s here, I know she’s safe. Whatever she decides to do next, I know that Jeff Thompson won’t have any power over her.