Page 37 of Beautiful When He Breaks

I nearly laugh at the misery of it. Of course, I’d start having weird feelings for my best friend at the exact point in life where I’m already drowning in enough identity-altering shit to qualify for a personality reboot.

I start the engine, then head home.

The house casts a warm glow against the darkening evening, every window lit when I get there. Somewhere inside is Mila. Somewhere inside is the life that already feels impossible and ordinary at once.

I head for the front door anyway, because whatever this is, whatever I am, whatever my best friend is making me feel without even trying, one thing is still true.

Home is on the other side of that door.

11

Julian

By the time I leave his apartment, I feel scraped hollow.

That’s the best way to put it. Not ruined, because ruined implies I was whole to begin with. That’s part of what makes it so hard to call it what it is. If it were only violence, only shouting, only bruises blooming dark, maybe I would’ve stopped lying to myself sooner. Maybe I would’ve had something definitive to point at—the moment it became wrong.

But tonight there are no dark marks blooming over my ribs, no bite of pain when I breathe, no handprint on my throat. Just the same shameful heaviness in my body, and the sense that I’ve been used up and then thanked for the privilege of it.

That’s the sickest part. There’s nothing on me, and I somehow still feel dirtier than the nights he leaves bruises behind.

He was soft tonight, and it keeps making my stomach turn as I head down the hallway toward the elevator, my duffel slung over one shoulder, the new watch cool and alien against my wrist. Soft voice, soft hands, no edge in the questions, and no impatience when I hesitated.

Then he went sweet. Sweet enough that, for a few minutes, I almost hated myself even more because some fucked-up, starving part of me recognized tenderness and wanted to believe it counted for something.

It doesn’t.

He didn’t need to put his hands on me hard tonight because he already had me in his room. He already had me obedient and stripped down to a numb, detached version of myself that thanks him automatically at the end because gratitude is safer than honesty, and performance is safer than refusal.

The watch sits heavy on my wrist while I wait for the elevator, and every time I feel its weight, I want to rip it off.

He chose it carefully because he knows what I like. Dark leather strap, clean face, expensive without screaming money. The kind of thing another person might notice and say, “nice watch, man, where’d you get it?” and I’d have to either lie through my teeth or tell the truth in a way that makes me sound complicit in my own humiliation.

He fastened it around my wrist himself, smiling that private smile he uses when he thinks he’s being generous, and told me he wanted me to wear it all the time now. There had been something possessive in it, something so neatly disguised as affection that for half a beat my brain almost let it pass. Then I heard myself say, “Thank you,” in that awful, polite voice I’ve started using with him, and I wanted to put my own fist through my mouth.

I leave feeling dirty and angry, used and stupid, and underneath all that, there’s always the same raw need to talk to someone. To say this happened and have them look at me without that flicker of judgment I’m convinced would come if I ever stopped protecting it. Luca offered. He saw too much in the locker room not to. I could still call him now. I could call Killian, maybe, though that would turn into action before I even finished the first sentence. I could even—

No.

Not Eli.

My whole body rejects the thought on reflex because he has too much on him already. The last thing he needs is me dragging this filth into his room and making him hold it, too. I’ve already leaned too heavily on his existence without ever asking permission. I’m not adding this.

So, I drive home in silence with one hand clenched too tightly around the steering wheel.

The house is lit warm against the dark when I get home, every downstairs window glowing. Home should feel like relief. Tonight, it mostly feels like another thing I have to fake my way through. I sit in my car for a minute with both hands on the wheel, the watch on my wrist turned downward so I don’t have to look at it.

Inside, there’ll be noise. There’ll be somebody in the kitchen. There’ll be a question or two, probably casual, maybe nothing more than, “hey, you eat yet?” or, “everything okay?” And I do not have enough skin left for concern tonight.

Taking a breath, I pull it together the best I can and go in.

Ryan is in the living room with Adrian and some terrible reality show on low volume. Liam is in the kitchen doing something with leftovers because that man would meal prep through the apocalypse. Nobody stops me when I come through the door, probably because I keep my head down and my expression blank enough. Even Ryan, patron saint of inappropriate timing, senses the neon danger sign behind my eyes and stays quiet.

Killian glances up from where he’s standing at the island with a glass of water in one hand, and that’s the closest I come to getting caught. His gaze flicks over me once, and for a heartbeat, I think he sees everything anyway.

He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I.

I take the stairs two at a time and keep moving even when I hear somebody else’s door open down the hall upstairs. My room is dark when I push inside, and I strip off my clothes and go straight to the shower. I take the watch off and set it on the sink before I step under the stream; seeing it there in the steam-fogged room makes my teeth grit. Even off my body it feels like a mark.