13. Julian
Julian
Salt and heat from the surf clung to the air, filling the car with a silence so thick it practically breathed. The space between us pulsed. With every seam the tyres struck in the asphalt, the vibration travelled straight up into my bones.
June shifted beside me. I didn’t have to look at her to feel the weight of her gaze. Then, the slide of skin against fabric—a soft, intentional sound that made the hair on my arms stand up. Her fingers grazed the hem of my shorts, a tentative touch that quickly turned into a firm hold on my thigh.
My grip on the steering wheel tightened until the leather groaned in protest. Naughty girl. She was testing me, looking for the cracks in a dam that was already under thousand-tonne pressure. This attraction had turned into a siege, a relentless assault I had no way of fighting off.
“I let you touch me,” she whispered. Her voice was a low, melodic hum that seemed to vibrate through the steering column and into the sweaty palms of my hands.
I risked a glance. She was looking at me through those pleading lashes—a lethal, intoxicating cocktail of virginal innocence and a raw, starving want. “It’s only fair.”
Her hand moved. Her touch climbing with an agonising, deliberate slowness, abandoning any hint of hesitation.
Her palm felt like a brand, searing through my skin, marking me.
Any resemblance of composure I had left, vanished.
My blood surged, an assault that left my head light and my body hardening painfully against the restraint of my shorts.
My heart hammered a rhythm of Primal, ravenous need that conflicted so violently with my duty I felt like I was being torn in two.
For a split second, the predator inside me won.
I imagined the frenzied, beautiful carnage of pulling over, of dragging her into the backseat and finally silencing the ache that had been building between us for years.
I wanted to see her doe eyes roll back. I wanted to hear her scream my name into the upholstery of my Camaro.
But then, the cold, iron weight of the future came slamming back in. The ritual. The debt. The reality of what I was supposed to be to her. The reality of what she was supposed to be to me.
I reached down and caught her wrist. I was too abrasive, too rough, my heart racing as I pulled her hand from my lap and placed it firmly back on her side of the console.
“Don’t,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine; it was a guttural rasp, like gravel being crushed under a heavy boot.
“What?” She blinked, the heat in her eyes flickering and then dying into a A tangle of confused rejection.
She let out a small, hollow laugh, trying to play it off as a game. “Julian, come on. Please…”
“I said don’t, June.” I kept my eyes locked on the road, my jaw set so tight I felt the bone begin to ache.
“Why?” Her voice went small, then with a sudden, defensive edge. “Why do that at the beach if it’s so wrong? Why touch me like that if you’re just going to shove me away again?”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t tell her that the beach had been nothing more than a catastrophic lapse in a decade of iron-clad discipline.
“I thought you liked me,” she whispered, her voice finally breaking. “I feel so stupid.”
She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with the sudden weight of rejection.
The guilt that hit me was more excruciating than the physical frustration.
Cain could sleep with anything that moved—men, women, it didn’t matter.
He was detached, hollow, a consumer of bodies.
But I was different. I hadn’t noticed I was waiting for something “special” until I realised that ‘special’ was her—and that touching her any further would mean losing the only control I had left.
“It’s not that I don’t like you, June,” I said, my voice straining for a composure I didn’t possess. “It’s that I like you too much. And that makes you a luxury I cannot afford right now.”
The rest of the drive to her Nana’s house was a nightmare. Every time she shifted, the sound felt like a blade scraping against my ribs. I could hear the broken cadence in her breathing—the sound of someone trying to swallow their own grief so it doesn’t make a sound.
I had waited my entire life for a girl to look at me the way she had on that beach, and I had just spent the last twenty minutes systematically destroying that look.
I was a novice at feelings, at intimacy, but I was a master at discipline.
And yet, seeing her like this made the discipline feel like a barbed-wire cage.
When I pulled up to the curb, the engine’s idle felt like thunder. June reached for the door handle immediately, her movements jerky and desperate, like she couldn't wait to get out of the car.
“June.” I reached out, my hand landing on her leg to stop her. The contact sent a jolt through me, a scorching reminder of the skin I’d just tasted for the first time. She flinched, but she didn’t pull away. She just stared straight out the windshield, her profile a mask of misery.
“Talk to me,” I said, struggling to get the words out.. “I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s bad timing. Everything right now is bad timing.”
It was a pathetic, half-truth explanation. The timing was bad because I was supposed to be her executioner, not her lover.
She finally turned her head. A single tear escaped, trailing a silver path down her cheek. She swallowed down any hint of a sob, wiping the tear away with a final motion.
“It’s fine,” she said, her voice flat. “I get it.”
“June, wait.” I caught her wrist. I saw the way she bit her lip to stop it from trembling, and I felt like a giant trying to pet a bird he’d already crushed. “There’s a carnival in town tomorrow. I… I want to take you. Please. Do you want to go?”
She didn’t answer right away. She just shrugged—a small, defeated movement of her shoulders that hurt worse than a scream. “I’ll pick you up at six,” I said softly. She didn’t agree, but she didn’t say no.
I watched her walk towards the porch, her head held high even as her body trembled. I sat there until the front door clicked shut and the porch light flickered off. Driving back to the manor, the guilt was sitting in my gut like lead. It’s for the best, I lied to myself. You’re protecting her.
By the time I reached the manor, the sun had dipped below the horizon, casting long, bruising shadows across the stone driveway. The house was a tomb. Cain’s car was gone; he was more than likely out drowning his boredom in a bottle and a woman—or man—whose name he wouldn’t remember.
I tried to work, but the image of June’s crying eyes was burned into my mind.
I eventually needed some paperwork from Cain’s office.
I walked into the room, the air thick with the smell of expensive cigars and the cold, clinical aura he seemed to cultivated everywhere he went.
I reached for the middle drawer of Cain’s desk, but it didn’t budge.
Locked. I frowned, the silence of the room suddenly feeling heavy.
Usually, my brother was careless with his office.
A locked drawer meant he was trying to hide something.
A cold knot of intuition tightened in my stomach—a visceral gut feeling I simply couldn’t ignore.
Driven by a dark curiosity, I didn’t even bother searching for a key.
I wrapped my hand around the handle, braced my weight, and yanked.
The locking mechanism gave way with a loud splintering of wood and metal.
I pulled the drawer open, and the world simply stopped.
There, tucked beneath a stack of invoices, were the envelopes.
Her University applications. The ones she had stayed up nights perfecting, her fingers stained with ink and her eyes bright with hope.
I saw her personal essays—the ones where she talked about her dreams, her future, her life beyond us, now crumpled and discarded like useless trash.
An instant rage erupted in my chest. It was a physical force, a roar that started in my gut and filled my brain until I couldn’t see. He wouldn’t be this sick. He wouldn’t be this selfish. He was willing to destroy her spirit just to keep her within his reach.
I sat down in his leather chair, my hands shaking as I smoothed out the wrinkled paper of her dreams. The applications were spread out before me like a crime scene, a testament to a betrayal I couldn’t ignore.
I sat in the dark, watching the door, waiting for the sound of Cain’s car in the driveway. I had spent my life being the “good” brother, the one who tempered his brother’s darkness. But as I looked at June’s ruined future, I realised that some sins can’t be balanced.