48. Roman
ROMAN
T here’s still blood on my hands.
Not physically—I spent the past twenty minutes scrubbing them in the bathroom of the gas station at the edge of campus—but mentally, all I can see on my fingers is red and the memory of a gun I was never meant to hold.
My mind is running a thousand miles a minute.
Merrick’s body.
Tyler twitching on the ground.
Frederick’s smile as he told me my father was dead.
I don’t know how to tell Juliette what happened, not sure if I can tell her.
And the game has changed completely. Frederick tried to kill me.
I can’t even focus on that right now, on the fact that technically, if my father is dead, I’m the new Montgomery patriarch.
My stomach lurches violently, bile teasing the back of my throat.
Frederick’s going to need me dead for his plan to work.
What the fuck am I going to do?
And he knows everything. Everything.
My sister. My mother. He’s been my father’s closest confidant for years.
My hand trembles as I pull out my phone and call Brooklynn, praying to God she answers.
“Roman?”
Her voice hits me everywhere and I close my eyes. “Hey, kid.”
“You okay? You sound weird.”
I drag a hand down my face. “I’m fine, are you home?”
“Yeah, why?” She hesitates. “Is something wrong?”
I shake my head, swallowing around the knot in my throat. “Just needed to hear your voice.”
There’s a pause on her end, and I can picture her frowning, arms crossed, like she knows I’m full of shit.
I grip the edge of the gas station sink, knuckles going white. “You’re safe? Doors locked?”
“Dude, I’m not twelve.”
“I know,” I murmur. “Just…humor me.”
Another second passes, and her voice softens. “I’m safe. I promise.”
I exhale, some of the weight loosening in my chest. “Good.”
“Hey, speaking of, is Mom with you?”
I freeze. “What do you mean?”
“I know you said not to try and contact her at that fancy rehab, but I called anyway, you know? I was worried…and they said she never checked in.”
I turn away from the mirror, ripping the bow tie until it’s hanging loosely around my neck. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
Lie.
Her voice cracks. “Do you think she’s okay?”
“I think she’s smart enough to lay low when needed. I’ll find her.”
“You always say that like you can fix everything.”
A small smile breaks through the panic swirling like a hurricane in my chest. “And have I been wrong yet?”
She exhales. “Be careful, Bear.”
I stare at the wall, my throat thick. “Love you, kid.”
“Ditto.”
We hang up, and for a second, the world stills.
Then I slide the phone back in my pocket, and everything starts moving again.
Juliette. Frederick. My father’s legacy. My mother, missing.
And me, somehow still standing in the middle of it all.
My fingers curl around the holes of the trellis as I climb up the side of the house until I can swing my legs over the railing of Juliette’s balcony.
It’s late.
And quiet.
Part of me is worried that her doors will be locked and I’ll have done all of this for nothing, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. I have to know that she’s okay.
She wasn’t at the gala, she wasn’t at Upside Down Rock… This is me hoping she’s here.
I know I should stay away. Should focus on what the hell I’m going to do next, but there’s a high chance I might end up dead before morning, and I can’t not see her one last time. And I’m a little on edge, worried that Frederick might do something insane like use her to get to me.
Slowly, and as quietly as possible, I walk across her balcony until I’m facing the double French doors, my reflection gleaming in the windows. Swallowing, my hands tremble as I reach out and try the handle.
The door clicks open immediately, and I blow out a large sigh of relief, my nerves quieting as I open the door and walk inside, my eyes immediately searching for her.
Her room is large, a four-poster king bed in the very center and detailed crown molding around the edges of the walls.
At least two of my entire studio apartments could fit in here with space to spare, and it hits me fully, maybe for the first time, that she’s grown up in this atmosphere, and I’m just now learning how to embrace it.
How, if I somehow make it out of this alive, I’m going to have an empire to take over, and a legacy to fix.
“Juliette,” I whisper into the dark.
Nobody answers.
My breath catches from the type of fear that creeps in with cold fingers and grips your spine. Each step is slower than the last, my pulse a staccato rhythm beating in my ears.
The shadows seem to bend around me as I move deeper into her room, my gaze scanning the area until I land on the shape of her on the bed.
She’s not moving.
I step closer and her outline sharpens. An arm is draped over her blanket, her hair spilling like ink across the cream pillow.
She lets out a tiny snore, and my legs nearly collapse.
I press a hand to the nightstand just to stay standing, the sudden rush of relief blurring my vision.
Juliette’s here. She’s safe.
The pale light of the moon streams in through the windows, kissing her skin, and I swear I’ll spend every moment for the rest of forever thanking God that she’s all right.
She looks so innocent when she’s this way, and my heart physically cracks in my chest knowing that when she wakes up in the morning, her world is going to break in two. And I can’t take her away from mourning her cousin. From her family.
Not like this.
How fucking naive were we to think that running away would solve anything ?
My fingers dust along the side of her face and across her cheekbones, lightly, like she might dissolve into nothing if I touch her too hard.
She’s so beautiful it hurts.
She’s the only thing that feels good , and I don’t want to give that up. I want to foster it instead, water it like a seed and watch it grow, and maybe in another life, we’ll be able to.
Her lashes flutter, and my fingers stall.
She blinks up at me, hands tucked beneath her chin, lips curved in a lazy smile.
It undoes me. Completely. Something inside me cracks, splintering right down the middle like a bone breaking.
“Hi,” she murmurs.
“Hi,” I whisper back, my voice hitching on the word.
She studies my face, and slowly awareness creeps in, and she jerks upright in the bed.
“Are you crazy ?” she hisses. “You’re sneaking into my room now?”
“I had to see you,” I admit. There’s a knot in my throat, and it’s hard to form the words.
Her eyes dart to the window. “What if someone saw you ?”
“They didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
Sighing, I run a hand through my hair, praying she doesn’t see it shake. “I need to tell you something.”
Her eyes darken, and she slaps a hand over my mouth. “No.”
Her palm is warm. Familiar. And it’s shaking, like even if she doesn’t know, her body does; something has changed irrevocably between us forever.
I run my fingers over her face again, drinking her in like fine wine, desperate to touch her, to catalogue every single inch of her so that I can draw her a thousand times and keep her with me always.
She chews on her bottom lip, and the spaghetti strap of her pink silk tank top drops off her shoulder and rests on her upper arm.
My eyes follow its trajectory.
“I need to tell you something,” I say again, although it’s barely audible. Just a raw rasp lodged somewhere between my ribs and my throat.
Her pouty lips part, and her tongue swipes across the bottom one. I keep myself from leaning in and repeating the motion with my own like muscle memory.
But I can’t force myself to move.
“What is it?” she asks.
The words stick on my tongue like smoke.
I open my mouth.
Try to speak.
Fail.
And I’m a fucking coward, but I can’t be the one to tell her. Not when she’s looking at me like I’m giving her the world, and I know how much worse things are going to get when I walk away.
Images of her cousin, twitching on the ground, flash in my brain and I grit my teeth, my eyes closing as I try to force it away.
“I love you,” I breathe.
She stares at me for what feel like the longest seconds of my life, her bottom lip getting chewed half to death, and then the most beautiful smile graces her face, and I think it might kill me.
“I love you, too,” she whispers back.
My heart gallops, stutters, rages against my ribs like it’s trying to tear me apart to stay by her side…but I ignore it. Because I know that tomorrow, she might think of me differently.
She moves to her knees and scoots close, wrapping her arms around my neck, her perfect fingers threading in my hair. “What’s wrong?” she whispers.
I grit my teeth. “I can’t—” My voice breaks, and I choke back a sob.
“Roman,” she murmurs, leaning in and pressing kisses to my face. To my eyes, my cheeks, my nose, my lips. “It’s okay, Trouble.”
It’s not.
I lean in, gripping her face in both of my palms like she’s the only thing tethering me to Earth, and I force her gaze to mine.
“I need you to hear me,” I tell her, my voice thick.
“No matter what happens, I will love you for the rest of this life, and every one that comes after. You are my reason, Juliette. I’ll spend every moment sketching you into the corners of this world.
” I pause, swallowing hard. “And when I’m gone, I’ll paint you in the sky. ”
She sucks in a breath. “You’re scaring me.”
“And you’ve wrecked me.”
In this moment, there is nothing else that matters. There is only Juliette.
I press my forehead to hers, trying to memorize her smell, her breath, the warmth of her skin beneath my palms. Maybe if I can burn my touch deep enough, it’ll stay with her after I’m gone.
She’s mine. I’m hers. That’s an irrevocable truth of the universe.
But if this is all we get in this life, then let this be the moment I carry into the next.
My breath falters, chest squeezing like the fist of death is closing around it.
And then I kiss her.
Our mouths crash together, messy and urgent. It’s not pretty, our teeth bump and our breaths tangle, but it’s real.
It’s us .