Chapter 376/The Dangerous Gossip
Chapter 376:
Julie’s POV
I calmly stepped aside to give her room. Stella burst through the door with her usual, overblown enthusiasm, dropping the heavy train case onto the wooden living room table. Turning around sharply, her curious eyes instantly swept over the white towel wrapped tightly around my body, her tone dropping into a demanding, final clip.
"First off, sweetie, move your ass and get your wet brown hair blown dry. Meanwhile, I am going to pick out the absolute best and most provocative colors for your skin tone tonight."
I curled my lips into a tight, forced smile of pure surrender, my feet feeling heavy as lead as I walked back into my bedroom. I threw on my clothes in a frantic rush and thoroughly dried my damp, messy strands. A few minutes later, I returned and sat down silently in the chair right across from her. Her soft, highly trained fingers immediately went to work, blending the powders across my features with a light, delicate, and razor-sharp focus. Her lips didn’t stop moving for a single second, rattling on with pure, childish excitement.
"Mike was an absolute, panicked wreck yesterday, seriously! He kept anxiously grilling me about what kind of places you like, and what your favorite food and drinks are... I am honestly so incredibly happy about this upcoming date between you two."
I maintained a dead, freezing composure, offering nothing more than faint, shallow nods and a hollow, engineered smile to mask the scalding lump of dread trapped deep in my chest. Ever since Max’s warning call, my mind hadn’t been on this dinner for a single fraction of a second, nor did I give a shit about pleasing Mike.
My scattered thoughts were swimming, drowning, and writhing in the cold streets of New York where my monstrous father and Robert were tirelessly hunting down my scent.
Stella drew a deep breath, finally winding down after her endless chatter. Her eyes locked onto mine with a sudden, creeping intensity, a flicker of hesitation flitting across her face. She lowered her slender hand, the mascara wand hovering in the air between us as she dropped her voice to a low, highly guarded whisper.
"Julie... I want to ask you something, and I need you to be completely honest with me."
I shifted my posture against the rigid wooden chair, keeping my tone entirely grounded. "Sure, Stella. Ask me whatever the hell is on your mind. I’m listening."
She nervously locked her fingers together, leaning her face closer to mine as her voice dropped into a soft, warm register, dripping with a desperate, sisterly plea. "I am your absolute best, closest, and only friend in this goddamn life... aren’t I, Julie?"
A faint smile touched my lips, and I lightly pressed my palm against her hand to ease her sudden anxiety. "Of course you are, sweetie. You are my literal soul sister here. Don’t you ever dare doubt that."
She let out a massive sigh of relief, a heavy weight visibly lifting from her chest. But within a split second, her features tightened right back into a rigid, highly suspicious expression. Her eyes scanned every line of my face with a sharp, calculating focus.
"I noticed it with my own two eyes yesterday..." she murmured, her voice dropping lower. "The tension and the energy between you and Jake is weird as hell. It’s completely loaded and hostile... Did you two get into a massive fight, or did something happen between you guys?"
A sudden, violent jolt struck the absolute depths of my chest like a literal knife. For a fraction of a microsecond, my eyes flared with raw panic before I aggressively forced my dominant, icy composure back to the surface. I twisted my lips into a calculated, dry frown of pure confusion.
"I don’t have a single goddamn clue what you’re implying, Stella," I shot back, my tone completely flat. "You know damn well that Jake is strictly my brother Steve’s best friend and nothing more. I honestly don’t comprehend what kind of relationship or friction could possibly twist between us for your ass to even notice it in the first place."
Stella shakenly tilted her head from side to side, completely unconvinced by my clean excuse. Her voice dipped into a low murmur, heavy with a deep-seated suspicion. "I get that, and my brain understands the logic... but when I dropped by this house yesterday, the way you two were looking at each other was terrifying. It was heavy, hot, and dangerous... You both looked so strangely intense and volatile, in a way I can’t even put into words. It’s like there is a pitch-black secret buried between you two."
A sharp, burning wave of anxiety crawled right under my skin, my pulse skyrocketing in pure terror. *Did Stella, with her sharp feminine intuition, actually catch a real thread of the monstrous, brutal violation that went down inside that bedroom?* Underneath the table, I aggressively clenched my fist into the fabric of my dress, hiding my trembling fingers. I forced my voice to sound entirely rigid and unshakeable, delivering a flat, final strike to shut her down.
"You are losing your goddamn mind and inventing wild fantasies, Stella. You’re just projecting because Jake has a garbage attitude and is constantly hostile and rude to everyone around him. That’s all it is."
She gave an agonizingly slow nod, a faint trace of disappointment and dissatisfaction lingering in her eyes. "Oh... alright then. Whatever you say."
A heavy, suffocating silence stretched between us for a few agonizing moments. She picked up a dusty pink lip liner, leaning back in to add the finishing touches with a guarded focus. But suddenly, her hands froze completely in mid-air. She looked at me with a sudden, raw curiosity.
"Tell me, Julie... are you actually into my brother Mike? Do you have real feelings for him?"
I shook my head in an instant, flat, and absolute rejection. "No, Stella. I don’t. He is strictly a close friend, like a brother to me."
Her eyes narrowed into slick, playful slits, a calculated smirk pulling at her lips as she caught me completely off-guard. "Then... is there someone else? Is there another man completely dominating your thoughts?"
I met her gaze with an iron, freezing detachment that violently murdered her curiosity. "No. Absolutely not."
Stella slowly set the lip liner down onto the table. Resting both of her soft palms flat against her knees, she leaned in even closer, her voice vibrating with a deeply dangerous, loaded undertone. "Jake is a strikingly handsome, intense, and lethally attractive man, Julie... you know that damn well. And now you two are living under the exact same roof, completely alone while Steve is stuck away at work... with time, who knows? Feelings could easily spark."
I turned into a literal statue, my muscles locking up as pure rage and indignation surged through my veins. I fired a harsh, furious glare right into her face, utterly repulsed by her blatant interrogation. "What the living hell are you trying to imply right now, Stella?! I told you very fucking clearly that he is my brother’s best friend. That solitary fact alone is more than enough to permanently wipe his ass from my mind and my existence forever."
She curled her lip into a vague, mocking smile, letting out a sharp, cynical laugh. "Really? Honestly, Julie, I don’t think you’re the type of uptight girl who gives a single shit about rules or red lines if your feelings actually got triggered and your body caught fire for a man like Jake."
My breath violently caught in my throat. A savage, desperate urge to rip the truth out of her skull seized my mind. *What the hell was going on inside her head? What the fuck did she actually know?* I locked my green eyes viciously into her face, delivering a direct, threatening challenge.
"Stella... tell me the absolute truth right now. Is there something you’re keeping from me? Why the hell are you interrogating me like this?"
She violently flinched backward, rapidly creating physical distance between us. She threw her hands up in a dramatic, overblown display of innocence to cover her obvious panic and shock at my lethal reaction. She let out a forced, highly nervous chuckle.
"Jesus Christ, Julie, it’s nothing! I’m literally just gossiping and shooting the shit about men like any two best friends would do! Don’t you dare read into a casual conversation and turn it into a federal goddamn case!"
I aggressively whipped my face away from her, filled with deep irritation and absolute disgust. I delivered a cold, razor-sharp command to permanently kill the dangerous conversation before it went any further.
"I am begging you, Stella... drop this goddamn topic right now and never bring it up again for the rest of your life. Let’s just finish this makeup quickly so we can get this over with."
[The coming events are full of chaos, so be prepared.]