Chapter 42 #3
Maybe he would’ve given me grace if he hadn’t already asked the night before. and the night before that, and all the nights before those. He’s been trying to understand, but like me, Julian has his limits, and I’ve driven us right off the edge.
“Not tonight?” he echoes hoarsely. “Not tonight?” Louder now. “So when, Aiden? When will you be willing to speak to me again?”
“Julian—”
“No,” he snaps, voice shaking with his anger. “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of you shoving me aside like I’m not here. You don’t want to tell me whatever’s going on with you lately? Fine, but you need to explain—actually explain—what the hell just happened!”
“I know I do, but—” I shake my head, trying to clear the mess inside it long enough to think.
“But what?” Julian presses. “You just shoved a bottle into a man’s hand, Aiden!”
Shame spikes as I remember the man’s face, all their faces, but the still-boiling anger under it roars back up.
“None of that would have happened if you weren’t out there in the first place.”
Julian barks a laugh, but it’s not like the one I witnessed earlier. There’s no humour in it, only cold rage. “So this is my fault?” he asks, breath rough.
I shake my head. No. That isn’t it. That’s not what I’m trying to say and this isn’t what I want. I just want out.
I stumble out of the car, hand on the door for balance, but it jolts in my grip when Julian gets out and slams his door behind him.
“Yeah, of course—provide no explanation, just the assumption that I’ll listen and do whatever you say,” he goads as he circles the car and marches towards me. “I’m your mate, not your bitch, Aiden!” His voice is loud enough to challenge the pounding in my head.
“I know that!” I snap, forcing my eyes up to meet his for the first time. “I know you’re angry and confused. I didn’t want that to happen. I just wanted some time to not be okay. Can I have that, Julian?”
“You’re not okay, but you were okay enough to go hunt rogues before you came to me?” Julian asks the question, throwing me so far off guard that I can only stare at him. “You smell like them. And blood, a lot of blood.”
“They were near the packlands. I handled it,” I grit out, only for him to huff another laugh. “What?”
“There were three,” he chides, letting me know it’s more than just the blood wafting from me that filled him in. “Three rogues had to be handled, or did you just want to kill them?”
I roll my eyes as I push off the car door and start towards the stairs. “Here we go.”
“Here we go with what?” he shouts after me as he follows. I wish he wouldn’t. I wish he’d just storm off so I could ride all this shit out alone, but Julian would never do that.
“You defending them!” I shout over my shoulder. “You fucking love them.”
“I don’t. I just don’t see the point of killing them for sport because you’re having a bad day!” he protests, making me stop. “You take out your anger by ending their lives, and that’s not right.”
“They deserve it!” I turn and let him have it. “They’re fucking mutts. They’re rogues, Julian!” My voice shakes, throat bulging. “If anyone should understand that, you’d think it’d be you after what they did to Oliver.”
I bite my tongue, but it’s too late. The words ring out.
Julian’s blue eyes clear, becoming almost translucent at that moment where hurt overwhelms anger. I watch the memories gut him. The way I gut him.
I hurt him, my mate, and I can feel the torture of it cut through me like poisoned claws.
I step forward, but he takes one back, tongue working the inside of his cheek.
“I don’t love them. I could never love them after …” He doesn’t finish, the pain of it all seeming to stop him, but he doesn’t let it deter him from getting the rest out. “And even if I did, shouldn’t you of all people be glad for that?”
I still. Every bone in my body, every muscle, every vessel—stills.
“… Why would I be glad for that?”
Don’t.
Don’t fucking say it.
Julian shrugs as his expression shutters. That flat, practised thing he does when he’s trying to hide behind his familiar walls. I’ve seen it before. Too many times to not see the hurt teeming there that fuels his next words.
“Because you’re one of them.”
They’re like a knife to the heart. Simple as they are, they slice the muscle open and bleed it dry, guided by Julian’s lips.
I’ve been hurt a lot in my life. By words and by sharper things. I learnt how painful this world could be very young and never forgot the lesson.
I never learnt how to suffer through pain like this though. And I never thought it’d be Julian behind the blow.
Even after all the years we spent hating each other, when it became clear that he was mine and I was his, and there was love there, I never thought … I never thought he could hurt me like the rest of them.
I stare at him through these cursed eyes, desperate to hide them. I’d gotten rid of all my shame because he said he didn’t hate them, that he liked my eyes … my red, fucked-up eyes … and I believed him.
I actually believed him. And now he thinks I’m fucking one of them.
I wanted to tell him. I laugh, low and bitter. He thinks I’m a fucking rogue, and I wanted to tell him.
I feel myself nodding as I sniff, looking at the ground to gather myself before I look at him again, making sure he sees me clearly so there’s no mistaking the sincerity behind my next words.
“Fuck you, Julian.”
I take the stairs in the packhouse three at a time, eating up the space as fast as I can so I can get the fuck out of here. What had become my safe space now feels like a cage, and if I don’t get out, I’ll burn it down with me inside.
In our place, I move on autopilot. I grab a bag and start stuffing it with shit without looking. Just need clothes. Space. Air. I stop just long enough to message my parents before heading for the door.
But the second I leave our room, Julian’s there, stepping through the door with frantic eyes.
The sight of him makes all the hurt and anger surge. I’m on the edge of my own sanity.
Julian’s eyes travel over me, lips parting aimlessly. Nothing comes out until his gaze drops to the bag in my hand, and then those blue eyes are filling.
“No.” He rushes forward and grabs my shirt, voice breaking. “No. No. Please don’t do this.” His fingers twist in the fabric as he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I—I’m so sorry.” His tears spill down his cheeks as he stares at me pleadingly. “I didn’t mean for it to get this bad.”
I pry his hands off my shirt with stiff fingers, trying to create some distance, but it only makes him cry harder.
“I can’t be around you right now,” I say as calmly as I can manage as his tear-stained face crumples, and it breaks my already ruptured heart.
“Please,” he says, trying to come closer, but I just step back. “Aiden,” he whimpers, begging. “I shouldn’t have said that, I know, but I wouldn’t care—Aiden, I wouldn’t.”
“You honestly think I’m a rogue.” I laugh, but there’s nothing funny about this. Maybe there is, but I’m too aware of the irony to enjoy it. “You think I’m one of them because of my eyes.”
Julian shakes his head hard, but he doesn’t say no.
“And if you don’t, then you said that to hurt me,” I growl through my teeth as my eyes glow with rage. “I didn’t do anything to hurt you on purpose—I’d never do anything to hurt you on purpose, but you did.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he says, clutching his shirt in both fists. His tears flow unchecked. “I didn’t mean any of it. I just wanted you to talk to me!”
“And I just wanted you to be there for me!” I shout back, my voice breaking on the childish want.
I know I’m fucked up. I don’t need to look in a mirror to know that. But for once, I wanted someone to get through it long enough to understand why.
“Aiden,” he tries again, voice trembling from the pain and hurt he can feel coming through my side of the bond. I lock it off and the sound he makes, like he feels it somehow, is worse.
“I need to go,” I say, now desperate to get away from him before my own tears fall.
“No. No. Please don’t go. I’m so sorry,” he cries, reaching for me as I shoulder past his hands. He sinks to his knees with a sob. “Don’t leave!” he begs as I reach for the door. “I love you!”
I almost laugh at the three words he dangles in the air.
The ones I hadn’t spoken in years, not since it’d happened, not to anyone other than him, and I’d meant them.
In every fucking way, I’d meant them, and look where it’d gotten me.
“You love me?” I sneer. “You expect me to believe that? You know how I feel about it, and you still—” The anger chokes me.
I shake my head with a deep breath. “I love you. I tried to put my shit aside today for you, because I love you.” Tears blur my vision, but I refuse to let them fall.
“I came to find you, because I love you. I allowed myself to love you like a fool! You decided to hurt me because of a stupid argument, and I’m supposed to believe that you love me?
” I ask with a chuckle as I turn from him, “If this is love, then I don’t want it. ”
“Aiden—no. I’m sorry. I do! I do lo—”
The door slams shut behind me, cutting him short. My heart shatters in the process as the tears I’ve been holding back stream down my face.