Page 72 of Beautiful When He Breaks

I close my eyes for one second, then push off the wall and head upstairs before I can change my mind and go looking for him again.

Because if I see him tonight, and he looks at me the way he looked at me over that table, I’m not sure I’ll stop the second time.

22

Eli

The adrenaline from the den wore off in ugly waves after I got back to my room, leaving me stranded in that horrible space between humiliation and hope where everything feels too sharp to touch directly.

Mila is asleep in her bassinet beside the bed, the baby monitor glowing softly on my nightstand. My lamp is still on because I told myself I’d read through some of the paperwork Mara sent over. But instead, I’ve spent the last forty minutes sitting against the headboard replaying the almost-kiss in the den so many times I want to claw my own skin off.

I can still feel how close he got. I didn’t imagine the look in his eyes or the way his hand slid up to my jaw or the way my whole body went hot and helpless and completely sure when he leaned in. Then Ryan stomped in with all the timing of a curse from God, and Julian bolted like the room was on fire. I’ve been sitting here ever since, wondering if I ruined everything by not going after him.

So when there’s a soft, uncertain knock on my door, I look up too quickly and feel my stomach drop before I even say anything.

“Yeah?” My voice sounds small. I hate that immediately.

The door opens partway, and Julian stands there with one hand still on the knob and his face set in a way I don’t know how to read at first. Not closed off or angry. Just serious enough that all the nervous hope in me stumbles and falls on its face.

“You awake?” he asks.

That almost makes me laugh, because I’m obviously awake. I don’t think I’ll sleep again before Mila starts college. I sit up straighter against the headboard and say, “Yeah. Come in.”

He walks in and closes the door behind him with care. I watch every movement too closely after what almost happened in the den, and every second of silence feels loaded. He’s changed into gray sweats and a black T-shirt, but under the embarrassment, want, and confusion, I can see something’s wrong.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. “What happened?”

He looks at me for a second, and I know immediately that this has nothing to do with the den. Or not only that. Whatever brought him here tonight sits older and uglier under his skin than one almost-kiss gone sideways.

He lets out a breath through his nose and drags one hand through his curls. “Can I sit?”

That scares me more than if he’d just started talking.

“Yeah,” I say immediately, shifting over and making space on the bed. “Yeah, of course.”

He crosses the room and sits on the edge of the mattress, but not close enough to touch. His elbows brace on his knees, hands hanging loose between them, and for a second, he just stares at the floor.

I don’t push right away because I know how it feels to sit on something awful until the words become their own kind of sickness, and somebody looks at you too hard before you’re ready. That’s the only thing stopping me from grabbing him by the shoulders and forcing every word out of him this second.

So, I wait.

Mila shifts in the bassinet and sighs softly in her sleep. The room goes still around that tiny sound. Julian glances toward her automatically, and the look on his face almost wrecks me because there’s so much tenderness there alongside all the damage. He loves her; that part’s obvious. He loves her like she’s just as much his to protect as she is mine, and maybe that’s stupid to think. But nothing about the way he holds her or watches her or arranges his life around her feels casual at all.

He swallows hard and says, “I need to tell you something.” His jaw shifts. “And I need you not to do the Eli thing where you decide the answer before I finish.”

“I don’t—” He just looks at me, and I stop. “Okay.”

He nods once and visibly swallows. “There’s a reason I’ve been… off. For a while now.”

I don’t say I know. I don’t say no shit. I just wait.

He presses his palms together once and rubs them over his thighs. “A while ago, after things went bad between us,” he starts carefully, still staring down, “I started something with someone I shouldn’t have.”

My chest tightens at those words, and Julian keeps going before I can interrupt him. “At first, it was a rush. That’s the embarrassing part, I guess. It felt exciting. Hidden. Dangerous in a way I thought I was choosing.” He gives one short, humorless laugh. “I told myself that was all it was. Something reckless. Something… fun.”

I don’t like the sound of any of that, and hate the look on his face while saying it.

He finally lifts his head and looks at me, and there’s enough shame in his face that my throat tightens painfully. “Then it stopped being fun.”