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Fuck, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to help her. “Jacquelyn?”
“So hot,” she said again, as she tried to focus. She blinked erratically and reached for him, and when she missed and fell forward, Julien grabbed her. “I’m so hot, Jules.”
Julien put a hand to her forehead, and she was right—she was burning up.
He leaned her back in the chair, about to go and get some ice. But when he went to stand, her hand clamped around his wrist and her confused eyes found his.
“Don’t,” she said, shaking her head, and Julien turned his hand around so he could take hold of hers. “Don’t go.”
Julien looked over his shoulder, conflicted. Ezra was pacing the floor with the phone to his ear, and Aaron—Aaron was nowhere to be fucking found.
Julien turned back to Jacquelyn, and a tear ran down her cheek. “I’m scared, Jules…don’t leave me.”
Julien fell to his knees in front of her and peered into the face that was so much like his own. Jesus, how could he have given her that fucking pill?
“Don’t be scared,” he said, and Julien wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself as he stroked a hand over her hair, pushing it behind her ear. “Ezra called an ambulance. They’re going to be here in just a—”
He never got to finish his words, though, because Jacquelyn’s head jerked to the left, and then her entire body torqued and froze at an unnatural angle. Not a second later, she pitched forward.
“Jacquelyn…? Jacquelyn!” he shouted, and barely managed to catch her as she began to seize. Her body started to twitch and convulse uncontrollably, and all Julien could do was watch in horror, helpless, as he laid her out on the floor and turned her on her side.
Tears streamed down his face as he moved down to lie beside her, taking one of her hands in his, and that was when he started to pray.
In English.
In French.
In a combination of both.
He tried everything he could, from apologizing for Aaron and the E, to offering himself up instead, and he did it over and over, determined that someone would hear him. Someone would help him.
He wasn’t exactly sure how long it took the ambulance to get there.
He wasn’t sure how he got from his parents’ house to the hospital.
But the next thing Julien remembered after lying down beside Jacquelyn and bartering his soul with God was coming to in a hospital room and realizing that God had listened.
Because Jacquelyn was gone. In a better place, they kept telling him.
And him? He was left there to suffer in a hell of his own making.
ROBBIE’S TEETH DUG into his lower lip as he tried to fight against the overwhelming emotions he was experiencing. Julien’s body shook against his where he’d curled in on himself and buried his face at Robbie’s hip, and the agony in his voice as he’d spoken of Jacquelyn’s final moments was heart-wrenching.
After the wave crashed down over him, Julien turned those haunted eyes up toward Robbie, and that was when he finally lost the battle. Robbie let his tears fall free as he brought a trembling hand up to stroke it down the line of Julien’s jaw. He was so incredibly beautiful, this man lying in his arms.
So incredibly beautiful and so unbelievably broken.
“Julien,” Robbie whispered into the heavy silence that now surrounded them, and he wanted to tell Julien that what had happened that night wasn’t his fault. That Jacquelyn was the one who wanted to take the drug. That Aaron was the one who’d given it to her. But Robbie knew Julien would never look at it that way. He would look at it that he was her big brother. He was the protector. And he had ultimately been the one to put that drug in her hand.
That line of thinking was so very Julien. Wasn’t Robbie always the one that thought of him as the nurturer? The one looking after all those around him?
A tragedy like this wasn’t something Julien would ever forgive himself for. But maybe he could look at things differently one day—maybe, Robbie thought, and lowered his head to press his lips to Julien’s.
As Julien’s dazed and tired eyes fluttered shut, a sigh left him, and Robbie wondered if he would feel better in the morning for having unburdened himself tonight.
That was a question he’d have to wait to get an answer for, though, because Julien’s breathing was now even and steady as he lay there on the floor in the protective child pose.
Robbie then noticed Julien was holding on to something, and he angled his head to the side to see a book in Julien’s hands: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
God, Robbie thought, as he stroked his fingers through Julien’s hair. The sadness you must feel…
