Chapter 13 Julian #2
Rafe doesn’t say another word. Doesn’t move. Just keeps watching.
The room is filled with it now—me and him and that goddamn video that’s been rotting a hole in my skull for months.
Rafe’s eyes are locked on the screen, unblinking, jaw tight, the muscle ticking in his cheek every time the moans get louder.
Every time Nathan whispers something soft and fake and fucking perfect.
I expect him to stop it. To throw the phone.
To leave. But he watches it all the way to the end. All the way to that part. The smirk.
That last ten seconds where Nathan looks right into the camera—into me—and smirks like he just fucked a secret into my bones and left a bomb ticking in my chest. The part I can’t ever scrub from memory. The part that’s louder than the sex, louder than the shame, louder than the fall.
I watch Rafe’s nostrils flare. His chest stills, then he rewinds it. Again. And again. And again. Ten seconds. That smirk. That lie. That death sentence.
His fingers curl around the phone tighter each time until the whole thing creaks.
Plastic casing groaning under the pressure.
I swear I see the fucking screen bend. And I’m frozen.
Too scared to breathe. Too ashamed to speak.
I’m still half-hard, still sprawled under a blanket like a fucking whore in heat, like a wreck who gets off on his own trauma—and he’s still sitting next to me like I’m not filth.
I flinch when he finally looks at me. Because the rage in his face is volcanic.
My chest seizes. I start pulling my hand out of my pants, shame rushing up my throat like acid, but Rafe’s hand closes around my wrist fast and hard, keeping it right where it is. Like he gets to decide when I stop punishing myself. Like he’s the one who owns this body now, not me.
“Tell. Me. What. The fuck. This is.” Rafe growls, voice guttural, each word punched out like it’s being carved into steel. He’s looking at me now. Really looking at me. And I can’t hold it. I can’t fucking take it.
I drop my eyes, swallowing hard. “Nothing,” I say. My voice is a croak, weak and hoarse. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Even I don’t believe it.
Rafe’s grip on my wrist tightens—tight enough to sting, to ground me, to make my pulse skip like it suddenly remembers who’s holding me. His voice drops lower, rougher, quieter than before, which is somehow worse. The rage isn’t shouting anymore. It’s concentrated.
“Jules,” he says, and the sound of it hits somewhere low in my spine. “Tell me you’re here because of a bet you placed against your own team.”
I freeze.
I wish that was the reason. Christ, I wish that was all it was. A bet. A bad decision. Greed. Something filthy but impersonal. Something I could admit to and survive.
But it’s not.
And Rafe’s eyes are on me, boring through me, already knowing.
My voice cracks as it leaves me. “I never placed a bet in my life.”
The words are barely out of my mouth before the phone flies—Rafe launches it across the container so fast it disappears in a blur, crashes against the far wall with a shattering crunch of glass and plastic. I flinch, breath catching in my throat, every muscle locking up.
He doesn’t say anything. Not right away. Just sits there beside me, chest rising fast, fingers still wrapped tight around my wrist like he’s holding onto the only part of me not broken.
And maybe… maybe he is.
“Why did you throw the game?” Rafe asks, quiet but sharp, like he doesn’t want the answer—like it’ll gut him—but he has to know anyway. His voice is tighter now. Controlled, but not calm. Like he’s fighting not to break something else. Not to break me.
I can’t meet his eyes. My throat’s raw. My lungs feel bruised. I nod, just once, before the words fall out of me like rot. “They threatened to leak the video.” My voice is hoarse. “I didn’t even know we were filmed until I got the threat and the flash drive in my cubby. Game 7. Same night.”
Rafe doesn’t move, but I see it. The second he puts it together. The second the image of that ending flashes behind his eyes—Nathan, smiling right into the lens, smug and slow and fucking proud of himself. That last ten seconds Rafe watched on loop like a goddamn death omen.
“But he knew.” Rafe says, the words a snarl under his breath. He doesn’t say Nathan’s name.
“Yeah…” I whisper, barely more than a breath. “Yeah, he did.”
And just like that, the room goes still. Dead fucking still. Like we’re standing at the edge of something we can’t walk back from.
Rafe’s hand moves before I can even breathe—slow, deliberate, dragging down from my wrist along the inside of my forearm, brushing over my knuckles until he finds exactly where my fingers are still curled under the blanket. Still wrapped around myself. Still humiliating.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He wraps his hand over mine—warm and huge—and I gasp, choking on the sound, because this is nothing like the shame I expected. Nothing like disgust. Nothing like the rejection I braced for the second he walked through the door.
“Jules…” Rafe starts, his voice dropping into that quiet, dangerous place that makes my bones vibrate.
“Yeah?” I whisper, breath trembling, eyes flicking up to him because I can’t not.
He holds my stare. And then his fingers tighten—slow and crushing—around my hand, around my cock, around the shame I’ve been drowning in.
He doesn’t break eye contact for a second. “I’m going to kill that man.” The words land like a blade sinking straight through the center of my chest.
I freeze, breath locked in my throat. His grip tightens again, just enough to make my hips jolt, just enough to make the air stutter out of me like I’m falling.
“If he’s the reason you’re this broken,” Rafe says, voice low and terrifyingly steady, “the reason I have to drag you out of your own mind, the reason you’re playing on the most dangerous rink there is just to stay alive…
” He leans in closer, so close I feel his breath on my lips.
“If he’s the reason you stare at the ice like it’s a fucking trauma flashback—he’s going to die. Slowly. And painfully.”
My eyes go wide. My pulse kicks. Shame and heat and something darker choke me all at once. “Rafe—”
But he isn’t done. He takes my hand—still wrapped around myself—and pries my fingers off, slow enough to be cruel, gentle enough to be devastating. My breath shudders, my cheeks burn, and then—he replaces my hand with his.
His palm. His grip. His heat.
His claim.
It’s the first time Rafe has touched me like this. And I don’t think I’ll ever recover.