Surrender by June Gray Read Free Book Online

had a nice time last night and now it’s time to go our separate ways.”
    A nice time. Ouch.
“It was more than a nice time,” I said, trying not to sound wounded, though not sure I was succeeding.
    â€œYeah, it was.” He cleared his throat. “Let me be honest: I like you, Julie. I want to get to know you. But that’s not going to happen unless you can admit it’s what you want, too.”
    I couldn’t find words to speak. Was he right? Had I gone in too deep with this man? More important, did I want to wade back out?
    â€œYou were only supposed to be a one-time thing,” I said, trying my best to brace the walls around my heart.
    â€œBut I’m not,” he said. “You and I . . . we were meant to meet.”
    â€œFor what reason?”
    â€œI don’t know yet. But I was hoping to find out.” When next he spoke, his voice was different. “Come to Las Vegas with me.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou said you still had a few days before returning to Dallas. So come to Vegas with me and let’s get to know each other.”
    â€œI can’t do that.”
    Could I?
    The idea was too crazy, too impulsive. I’d been crazy and impulsive once, but that was a long time ago. I’d forgotten what it was even like to be that girl. “I like my life the way it is. Simple and uncomplicated.”
    He didn’t say anything for a long time. I got the feeling he was trying to rein in his frustration. I couldn’t say I blamed him. “I leave at four thirty,” he said. “If you’d like to do something different for a few days, then come. If not, then . . . ’bye, Julie. I enjoyed our time together.”
    After I hung up, I stared at the tan-colored wall in front of me, trying to make sense of my jumbled emotions. My head told me I’d made the right decision; why then were my insides in knots?
    I walked down the hall, toward the living room, when I felt a strange sensation wash over me. I stopped in front of Jason’s old bedroom, looking through bleary eyes at the things he’d left behind.
    The years since his death had dulled the pain, but I suspected I would always feel his loss. I walked inside, my eyes landing on the three black-and-white photo booth strips arranged together inside a wooden frame.
    They had been taken a few months after college, when I’d come to visit him in Texas during his Air Force training. We stumbled upon the photo booth in a mall and I pulled him inside, despite his protestations. The first set was of us looking serious, hugging and posing. In the second set we had fun—tongues out, ears covered, bunny ears, fishy faces. The last strip was my favorite: when he turned to me as if seeing me for the first time, then he kissed my cheek, then we were making out. The final image—of the two of us just looking at each other—was the image that held the most meaning.
    â€œCan you be my boyfriend again?” I’d asked him before that final shot.
    The camera snapped the picture in the nanosecond between his surprised reaction and his grinning response. “Well, yeah,” was his easy reply.
    â€œThis is going to be tough for a while,” he said later as we walked hand in hand in the mall. “I’ll be moving again in a few months and you’ll be starting work in New York.”
    â€œI don’t care,” I said, pulling on his hand to bring him closer, wrapping an arm around his waist. “I shouldn’t have broken up with you. I know that now.”
    We were happy for a time, until he moved to Oklahoma and I became too busy with an off-Broadway show, and he decided that a long-distance relationship was just too much work.
    â€œI found those in Jason’s old things and thought Will would like to see them.”
    I wiped my eyes with my sleeves before turning around to face Elodie, who was standing in the doorway. “I