My entire heart shatters. I stop breathing. I can feel the barbed wire as it wraps around my throat, the sorrow as it seeps into my skin and strangles me.
“What?” I whisper.
“Last night,” he rushes out, “Abigail called because she heard a lot of banging, and I could hear you crying and yelling, so I… I know I shouldn’t have, but I went upstairs. And I saw… I saw thatthing. What it was doing to you.”
He stops, as if waiting for my response. When I just stand here, staring at him with wide, shell-shocked eyes, he continues.
“After it left, I washed you up so that you’d feel better. And once you were safe in bed, I went back to my room, that way neither of us would get into trouble.”
I can feel my body moving. I have no thoughts, so I know I’m not doing it intentionally, but I feel my hands lift and remove his from my neck before taking a step back. My back hits the door.
“You… you went into the west tower after dark,” I repeat.
“What was that thing, Atlas?” Julian questions, swallowing up the distance I just created as he takes a step toward me. “Why was it fucking you so brutally?”
I flinch, my eyes falling from his to stare at his sweatshirt. I can’t handle the disgust, the judgment. I wish I could disappear; I wish he’d leave me alone.
What do I do? I never intended for him tosee.
And worse…oh, god… this means…
I’m not cured at all—Julianinterrupted.
“Atlas.” Julian’s hands take hold of my face, his palms cradling my cheeks. “Look at me! Is this your condition? Your curse? That somemonstercomes from the shadows and fucks you until you cry?”
I stare into his dark eyes. He’s panicked, concerned, disgusted. I can see it all there—and I hate it. And I hate that hegave me this false hope. That I was allowed to believe I was free for a single moment.
“He wasn’t a monster. You saw my boyfriend.” The lie slips from my mouth so easily, I’m almost startled by it.
Julian’s face goes completely blank, his hands tightening on my cheeks. “… What?”
“You saw my boyfriend and me having sex. Which was very inappropriate, I might add. I may find myself reporting this to my father.” The threat in my voice is clear, and I do everything in my power to keep from shaking.
To keep from crying.
Hold onto your anger, Atlas.
“No,” Julian demands, a look of determined irritation taking over his features. “Isawit. I saw the black eyes and the sharp teeth. Iheardit. Then it fucking disappeared right in front of me! No human can do that, Atlas. Don’t lie to me.”
“You’re becoming far too comfortable with me, Julian,” I sneer, doing my best to narrow my eyes at him. “It isYoung Master Atlaswhen you speak to me. And I am unsure which nightmare of yours mixed with your Peeping Tom activities from last night, but I’m certain my boyfriend does not know how to disappear into thin air.”
I am doing everything I can to manipulate Julian, and he’s growing angrier by the second. I can see it in the way his thick muscles are tensing, his skin growing red, a vein throbbing in his neck.
“I know what I saw. I didn’t even sleep last night; how could I have mixed a nightmare with reality? Hm?” He presses himselffurther into me, and the familiar feeling of arousal lights up my nervous system.
I swallow thickly, fighting the unwanted reaction I’m having to his hands still touching my face, the length of his body now flush against the length of mine.
“I’m not a doctor nor a psychologist, Julian,” I tell him. “I can’t analyze your mind. But Icantell you to stop taking my serious medical condition and trying to turn it into a fairytale because you can’t handle the fact that another man is getting to, what is it you said? Fuck me until I cry?”
An expression of genuine, pure rage explodes over Julian’s features. His body presses into mine impossibly further, his hands sliding from my cheeks and back into my hair where he grips it just hard enough to hold me, but not enough to hurt.
“This is not about jealousy,Young Master Atlas. You can only be jealous of someone if you feel inferior to them, and I know for a fact that if given the opportunity, you’d comemuchharder on my dick than you ever have on his.”
I shiver aggressively, my hands instinctively gripping his sides. And right as I’m about to begin spiraling over his words, unsure of how I’m supposed to move forward in this sudden mood shift, it hits me.
His. He said his, notit.
“Very well,” I agree quietly, grasping onto this small win. His hot breath is caressing my ear, and I can barely think around it. “Even if that is true, it does not matter. Because at the end of the day,hewill still be the one to take me.”
