Chapter 19 Julian #2
He strips off his shirt, tosses it onto the chair, runs a hand over his face, revealing the exhaustion beneath the public persona.
He looks tired. It’s not the kind of tired that comes from a long day of performing.
No, it’s the kind that comes from carrying something heavy for too long, a weight I recognize all too well.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice rough, concern etched into the furrow between his brows.
I don’t answer right away. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, my fingers curled into the duvet, creasing the silky fabric. I can feel his eyes on me, searching, trying to read what I won’t say.
“You were. . .busy tonight. It’s funny, they know you’re gay, yet they still attempt to seduce you,” I say finally, aiming for casual but missing by miles.
Malik exhales, slow and controlled. He knows what I mean. He always knows, seeing through my words to the fear and insecurity beneath.
“It’s part of the job, Miles baby.”
Miles. My middle name. The one only he uses. The one that makes my chest tighten every time it falls from his lips, a reminder of who I am when I’m with him.
“I know.”
“Do you?” He steps closer, his knees brushing mine, his presence filling my space. “Because you looked like you wanted to set the room on fire.”
I don’t deny it. Can’t deny it when the embers are still glowing inside me.
He crouches in front of me, his hands finding my thighs, warm and solid. His touch is grounding, anchoring me to this moment, to him. “We can slow down,” he says quietly, his eyes never leaving mine. “If this is too much.”
I want to say yes. I want to tell him to stop, to put distance between us, to make this easier.
To make it safe. To return to the careful boundaries that have protected my career, my image, my carefully constructed life.
I can’t go back to hating him. . .but maybe friendship, a carefully managed friendship. I don’t say any of those things.
“No,” I say instead, the word surprising even me. “Just. . .give me time. I’m not used to being a situationship like this. A relationship like this.”
Malik studies me for a long moment, searching my face for certainty. Then he nods, accepting what I’m offering without pushing for more. “Okay.”
He doesn’t push, or demand for me to give him more. Doesn’t make me say the words I can’t yet form, the confessions trapped behind years of silence.
He just kisses me, gentle now, understanding, and for now, that’s enough. It has to be.
I know this can’t last. I know the tour will end.
The world will creep back in with its expectations and judgments, and the choices I’ve been avoiding will have to be made.
The carefully maintained separation between public and private will demand resolution.
Those choices can wait though, not yet, not tonight.
Tonight, I let him pull me down onto the bed.
I let his hands slide beneath my shirt, tracing patterns on my skin like music only he can hear.
His mouth finds mine in the darkness, familiar and new all at once.
I let myself forget, just for a little while, that this is borrowed time, a temporary reprieve from reality.
Our next stop is Paris, city of lights, city of lovers. The irony doesn’t escape me, and I don’t know if I can keep hiding any longer.
Everything is about to change. I can feel it coming like a storm on the horizon, inevitable and transforming.
The pressure has been building for years—perhaps my entire career—this quiet accumulation of half-truths and careful omissions that’s grown too heavy to carry.
When I look at Malik, when I feel his hands on my skin, I understand that the weight is crushing us both.
Part of me is terrified. Terrified of Eli’s disappointment, of contracts dissolving, of audiences turning away, of my parents disowning me.
Terrified that everything I’ve built through meticulous control will crumble like sand.
I’ve constructed my entire life around what people expect Julian Reed to be: disciplined, composed, safely packaged for public consumption.
Part of me is ready. Ready to stop measuring every word, every gesture, every photograph.
Ready to play without borders, to breathe without counting the seconds, to look at Malik without glancing over my shoulder first. There’s a strange, unfamiliar freedom in imagining the aftermath, whatever remains after truth would at least be real.
All of me belongs to him, whether I admit it aloud or not.
It’s been that way since Berkland Academy, since he first called me Miles in that practice room with sunlight streaming through dusty windows.
My body knows it when his fingers trace my collarbone.
My music knows it when I slip into his melodies without thinking.
I just need to admit it so the entire world knows, so that when they see us together in Paris, there will be no question, no careful distance, no plausible deniability. Just us, finally, in the light.