34. Julian
Julian
Iwas coming through the front door, the weight of the groceries in my arms a mundane, domestic comfort I’d almost started to believe was tangible. I’d bought the fancy pasta she liked and the heavy cream for the sauce Nana used to make. I was trying to build a life out of ingredients and apologies.
Then the sound hit me.
Smashing. Crashing. The sound of a room being torn apart by someone who no longer cared about the cost of the crystal. I dropped the bags—glass jars shattering against the hardwood, olive oil and milk pooling into a mixed mess and sprinted towards the stairs.
Then came the screams.
It was a bellowing sound that tore through the air, vibrating through the manor halls. It was a raw wail of soul-destroying betrayal.
“June! June, where are you?”
The wailing finally gave me a pinpoint. I rounded the corner into Cain’s office, and my stomach bottomed out. I was screwed. I knew this would happen. I told Cain.
The office was a graveyard of broken things.
Paperwork and journals were strewn like fallen snow.
Smashed scotch bottles and overturned ashtrays littered the floor, the smell of alcohol and ash thick enough to choke on.
In the centre of the wreckage sat June. She looked so small, her hands trembling as they clutched a crumpled stack of papers.
The sight of her made me feel physically sick. Her face was swollen, her eyes bloodshot. But when she looked up, her gaze didn’t hold the warmth I’d spent months reclaiming. It was cold and accusing.
“Tell me you didn’t know!” she screamed.
I froze. “June, what… what are you talking about?”
She held up the papers, and I felt the blood drain from my face. It was her applications. I remembered the night Cain had stood by the fireplace, the orange light dancing in his eyes as he told me the “evidence of her ambition” had been reduced to ash. He’d promised me she would never find out.
But there it was. A thick envelope, the corner torn, and her personal essay. The one she’d stayed up until 3:00 AM writing—lying on the floor, never even stamped. Cain hadn’t burnt them all. He’d kept some like trophies.
“These were supposed to be in the mail, Julian!” she sobbed. “I worked so hard. Why are they here? Why are they in his desk draw?”
“June, I—I don’t know, I thought—”
“Tell me you didn’t know!” she shrieked, falling to her knees among the glass shards. “How could he do this? Julian, please… please tell me you weren’t part of this.”
I opened my mouth to lie, but the words died in my throat. Before I could speak, a shadow fell across the doorway.
Cain.
He stood there, his eyes scanning the destruction with an irritating calmness.
“What the fuck is going on in here?” he asked.
The shift in June was instantaneous. She erupted like a volcano, launching herself at him like a gale-force wind. Her small fist connected with his jaw in a sickening crack.
“You asshole! You lying, soulless prick!”
I lunged, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her back. She was a live wire in my arms, thrashing with a strength that shocked me. “June, stop! Calm down!”
“Calm down?” she barked, her nails digging into my forearms. “He ruined my life!”
Cain wiped a bead of blood from his lip, his eyes narrowing into dangerous, predatory slits. He looked at June with an expression that made my skin crawl. “Watch yourself, June. You are a guest in this house. You’re overstepping your boundaries.”
“I’ll do more than overstep!” she yelled, grabbing a heavy glass paperweight and hurling it at his head. He ducked, the glass shattering against the doorframe after smacking into his desk. “You took everything from me! I wish I never met you!”
Cain let out a dry, mocking laugh. “Ruined your life? We saved you, June. You were destined for something greater than a degree. You should be thanking me for keeping you where you belong.”
“Thanking you?” she cried, the word coming out as a broken, hysterical sob. “I want to kill you! I want to burn this house to the ground with you inside it!”
“Try it,” Cain warned, his voice dropping to a low threat. “See how far you get before the walls swallow you whole.”
June looked at him, then at me, the realisation of our collective silence finally sinking in. She let out a final, defeated sound, a gasp of pure loathing and shoved past me, sprinting out of the room. “I hate you! I hate both of you!”
I turned to Cain, my hands shaking. “I told you she’d figure it out. You better fucking fix it. If she leaves this house because of your goddamn ego, the Ritual won’t be the only thing that ends in blood.”
Cain just looked at me, cold and unmoved. “She isn’t going anywhere, Julian. She’s exactly where she was always meant to be.”
I didn’t even look back at him. I caught up to her in her bedroom. The sound of it broke my heart: the zip of a suitcase, the frantic rustle of fabric.
“June, stop. Please, just listen to me,” I pleaded.
“I have to get out of here,” she muttered. “I can’t breathe in this house—”
“Whatever he’s done, I’ll make it right,” I said, reaching out to grab her arms. She wouldn’t look at me, her gaze was unrecognisable.
“I’m not staying, Julian,” she yelled. “And you can’t make me.”
“June, you can’t leave, please—”
“Watch me.”
She snatched up her things and bolted. I followed her down the stairs, my boots thundering.
As she hit the foyer, she started to run.
She burst through the front door and hit the lawn with a speed that let me know she was serious.
She was halfway to the iron gates when I reached out, my fingers catching the strap of her backpack.
I yanked her back, harder than I intended, and she was thrown off balance, sprawling onto the grass with a thud.
She didn’t stay down. She started kicking, flailing, and fighting me immediately. “June, just listen! Stop!”
“Get off of me!”
I lunged for her, trying to pin her down. She thrashed around in hysterics and we both fell, rolling across the damp lawn. I finally managed to get the upper hand, straddling her and pinning her wrists above her head.
“June, listen to me!” I shouted. “Stop fighting me! Please!”
“I hate you!” she shrieked. “I wish I’d never gone to church with Nana that Sunday!”
The words hurt, I won’t lie.
I leaned down, my face inches from hers, and finally told her what we both already knew but she was desperate to hear.
“I love you!” I finally admitted. Not just to her, but myself.
She froze. Her thrashing immediately stopped. The only sound was our heavy breathing.
“I love you, June,” I whispered, my voice a broken thing.
“I’m a coward for waiting to tell you, a monster for how much I want you, but I love you more than any soul has ever been allowed to love.
It’s beautiful and all consuming. I watched him steal your future, and I stood by and let it happen because the thought of a world without you in it was a death I couldn’t face.
I am the villain of this story. But I am a villain who would scale the heavens and slaughter God himself just to keep you by my side. Don’t leave me, June.. please.”
She started to cry again, a broken, defeated sobbing. I couldn’t stand it. I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers, a desperate attempt to anchor her to me. She tried to push away at first, but then, the energy between us shifted.
The resistance vanished. She began to kiss me back with a feral, biting intensity. It was a kiss born of rage, a desperate attempt to reclaim power. She was biting my lip, pulling me closer even as she sobbed into my mouth. I could taste the salt of her tears and the tang of my own blood.
Then, as quickly as the fire had ignited, she extinguished it. She shoved me off, scrambled to her feet, and grabbed her bags. Without another word, she stormed back towards the house. She couldn't leave; the gates were locked, and she knew I had the only key.
I stayed there on my knees in the grass for a moment, before I stood up slowly and began the long, silent trail back inside behind her. I had finally said the words, and they hadn’t saved us. They had only made the cage smaller.
I watched her from across the kitchen island, a cold knot of anxiety tightening in my chest. She was humming along to the record that was playing in the background, her soft voice echoing through the manor halls.
In My Solitude by Billie Holiday was playing, its melancholy notes casting a heavy shadow over the room her light, airy tone stripped away the gloom lingering as if she were untouched by the darkness of this house.
She was smiling, too, as she poured herself a glass of orange juice. It didn’t reach her eyes.
I didn’t know what was weirder, June not mentioning the office, or the fact that she was acting like yesterday had been a fever dream.
“You’re awfully cheerful this morning,” I said, leaning against the counter.
She didn’t look up. “It’s a beautiful day, Julian. Why wouldn’t I be?”
I watched her reflection in the window. The second she thought the stage was empty, her smile vanished. Her eyes tracked the back of my skull. In that split second, I saw a look so devoid of warmth, so far from love, it made my stomach sink.
Cain walked past then, the morning paper under his arm. Without breaking her hum, June calmly raised her middle finger at him. Cain scowled and kept walking. She definitely wasn’t over it. The “good girl” act was a thin veneer over a well of pure spite.
“What do you want to do today?” I asked. “Want to cross something else off your list?”
“Not today, Julian,” she said, her voice flat. “I’m tired.”
“Are you sure? We could get away from the house for a while. Just us.”
“I said no.” She cut me off abruptly.
“I have a headache. I’m just going to go lie down.”
She turned to walk away. I reached out on instinct, my fingers closing around her arm. “Hey…”
She froze. She didn’t pull away, but she went perfectly still, like a deer caught in headlights.
“Are you okay? Really?” I asked. “You can tell me, June.”
She finally looked at me, her head tilting slightly. Her eyes were like glass. “And why wouldn’t I be okay, Julian?”
The sarcasm was so subtle it almost didn’t register, but it stung worse than a slap. She gently disengaged her arm and walked away before I could utter another syllable.
I stood there in the middle of the kitchen. I realised that the June I knew, the one who gave me her blind trust, was gone. In her place was someone I didn’t recognise. Someone who was learning how to play the game just as well as we did.