Forbidden Boy

If Julia

But she was scared for her life, so she just sat there, glued to the gray upholstery, stupefied as Chloe turned her rage away from Remi and back in Jules’s direction. “And you!” she shrieked at her. “I don’t think I can ever forgive you! How could you? How dare you? Julia

and you’re practically sleeping with their son? At work?

Jules, who are you? You’ve totally betrayed our family.

What would Mom think of this?”

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Hailey Abbott

Julia

She tried to quell the torrent of words spilling out of Chloe’s mouth. “Chloe, I never meant . . . Remi’s really—” she began.

Chloe cut her off before Julia

He’s probably a spy!”

It had never occurred to Julia

He was using Julia

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Forbidden Boy

“I can’t believe you would compromise our position like this!” Chloe continued. “Did you know that we might have to sell the house? Did you even realize that?

I can’t believe you would do this to us! As soon as Dad gets back to LA, you need to tell him about this, Julia

When Julia

As Julia

Sure enough, her painting—her mom’s painting—that she’d worked so hard on all summer had been caught in the deluge. A border of about four inches of paint at the bottom of the canvas was totally distorted. She couldn’t even tell it was paint, let alone a picture of their beach.

It was completely ruined. Everything was completely ruined.

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Chapter Twenty-one

!

For the next few days, Julia

Chloe wouldn’t talk to her or even look at her.

She’d never known Chloe to hate another living soul in her entire life, and she never in a million years would have thought that she’d be the first. Julia

Forbidden Boy

another, Dad made Jules walk down to her mother’s grave to apologize in person for betraying her memory, only to find the epitaph had been changed to read, “I don’t forgive you.”

The flood damage in the living room was so intense that Julia

Julia

“Julia

Julia

Hailey Abbott

“Oh, yuck. Sorry about your living room. My summer has been good.” Liz’s shaggy, blond hair bounced around her face. “I’ve been lifeguarding—the usual. It’s been really nice. But I promised my mom I’d help her stain the deck today, so here I am.”

“Well, have fun. It was great ru

“Yeah, good luck with the flooding stuff,” Liz said as she turned to go. “But I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Jules—if worse comes to worst, you can always move into that glass castle thing that’s growing next to your house!” Liz giggled and waved as she walked off to find her mother. Julia

The last few days, she’d been getting out of bed in the middle of the night, cleaning and dusting and straightening the house. She was fixing the things she knew how to fix before Dad got home and everything else fell apart again.

! ! !

When she got home from the hardware store, she beat out the rugs over the deck railing and sorted the wrapping paper in the living room drawer by color. Julia

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She was shocked that she could feel this lousy. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She had completely destroyed everyone she loved. And, to top it all off, her mother’s painting was totally ruined. The paint had twisted into grotesque lumps of oill and plastic; even the canvas underneath had warped. She wouldn’t even know where to begin to repaint it. It had been so hard the first time, Julia