She walked back to me, her face pinched. “You tried to save my vines?” she asked, repeating my words.

I nodded, feeling exhausted and defeated as the adrenaline started to filter out. “I tried, but the flames were so close. And they wouldn’t stop.”

“James …” She reached for my hand and clasped her fingers with mine. It was such an intimate gesture, but it wasn’t something that we did. Julia La Bella was never supposed to hold my hand. “They didn’t burn.”

“They didn’t?”

“No. Come look.” She pulled me to the edge of the cliff and pointed.

Where the fire had once been very much alive and breathing, nothing but smoke and small hot spots remained.

Relief flooded through me. “They’re okay,” I breathed out, tangling my free hand in my hair.

She smiled, nodding. “Because of you. Why’d you do that?” she asked before dropping my hand like it could no longer be trusted.

“Do what?” My brain was spinning with confusion, with exhaustion, with a thousand emotions hitting me all at once.

“Why did you save my vines instead of your own? Your dad’s going to kill you.”

In that moment, I had forgotten that anyone else existed, especially my dad. Glancing away from the charred remains of the fire, I looked hard into Julia’s hazel eyes. “I know how much they mean to you. It would have killed you to lose them.”

“So? What do you care if I lose them or not?” she asked sincerely. Julia was genuinely confused.

I considered telling her that I was in love with her, always had been. I wanted to lay it all out on the line, but something stopped me. “I don’t like seeing you hurt,” was all I could admit.

Her expression instantly softened. “That’s funny. Are you joking?”

“What’s funny?”

“It’s just that I would have thought the exact opposite, is all.”

I swallowed hard, her words stinging. “You think I like seeing you hurt?”

She shrugged slowly, her shoulders scrunching up at the same time as her lip curled. “I just didn’t think you cared either way, to be honest. You didn’t care in high school, so why would you care now?”

She was talking about the rumor I’d started back then. Hell, if it wasn’t our parents coming between us, my mistake sure was.

“I’ve always cared.”

Her hips moved as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Okay. Well, thank you.” She tilted her head. “This isn’t a trick, right?”

“How would this be a trick?”

“I don’t know,” she stuttered, clearly rattled for whatever reason.

Had I really been that big of an asshole to her that she would question a good deed and think there was malicious intent behind it?