3. Julian
Julian
I get Eli upstairs because I need him somewhere quieter before the whole damn house crushes him with concern. That’s the excuse I use, anyway. The truth is that I need him away from all those eyes before my own control cracks and someone sees it.
The baby is tucked against Eli’s chest as we climb the stairs, one tiny fist hooked in the front of his shirt as if she already knows he belongs to her now. He moves like the stairs are unfamiliar territory, his blue eyes fixed downward, his face pale.
I know him well enough to see the panic he’s trying to swallow.
Most people would miss it because Eli’s always been good at looking solid.
He’s built for it—broad shoulders, muscle, that easy all-American kind of face people trust on sight.
Dark hair, blue eyes, and a football tan that makes him look healthy even when he’s not.
People look at him and see a clean-cut, dependable man from a good family, with a good heart. The kind of guy who smiles at old ladies in church and carries too many grocery bags in one trip because he doesn’t want anyone else to have to do it.
I look at him now, and I see a man trying so hard not to break apart in front of everyone that he’s holding himself together with sheer force and not much else.
“Keep your arm under her head,” I tell him quietly, staying one step below and slightly behind him in case his knees give out. “You’re doing fine.”
He gives a stiff nod but doesn’t look at me.
Fine. The word tastes bitter even in my own mouth.
Nothing about this is fine. There’s a newborn in his arms, a lawyer’s letter downstairs, a girl who disappeared after making his life hell, and an ugly, black suspicion sitting in the middle of all of it with its hands folded neatly in its lap.
I can feel it there. I know Eli can too.
Neither of us wants to look straight at it because once we do, the whole room changes shape.
When we reach the upstairs hall, the noise from downstairs fades into a muted, anxious rumble. Eli stops outside his bedroom door, staring at the handle. I reach around him and open it, careful not to brush too close because he’s wound so tight I’m scared even that will snap something.
His room is exactly what I remember from before the silence between us got too thick.
Neat but not obsessive. Football gear tucked against one wall.
A Bible on his nightstand, its spine worn from use, not performance.
A stack of sports psychology textbooks. A half-empty bottle of water, a hoodie tossed across his chair, and his bed unmade because he never learns, no matter how much he pretends he’s more put together than the rest of us.
The sight of that stupid unmade bed almost breaks me.
Because I know this room. I know where he keeps extra socks.
I know which drawer has protein bars and which one has the old letters his mom wrote him during his freshman year because she cried every time she called and didn’t want him to hear it.
I know Eli Matthews in ways I’ve spent months trying to bury because loving your best friend while he chooses someone who hurts him is a special kind of self-inflicted hell.
“Here,” I murmur, stepping close enough to take the baby. “Let me.”
His arms tighten around her for half a second, then his eyes flick up to mine, panicked and apologetic all at once. “I’m scared I’m gonna drop her.”
“You won’t,” I say, holding his gaze. “But I’ve got her.”
He nods and lets me slide my hands beneath the baby’s small body.
She’s warm and limp with sleep, her tiny head settling into my palm, and my chest squeezes so hard I almost curse out loud.
I’ve held babies before. Jess was basically glued to me for half my childhood.
Cousins. Neighbors’ kids. Family friends who thought that because I was tall and broad, I’d be useless, until their babies shut up the second I took them.
But this isn’t just a baby. This is Eli’s.
Maybe. Fuck. The word alone makes me want to punch something.
I carry her to the bed and lay her down in the center, far from the edge, gently rolling one of Eli’s clean hoodies and setting it near her side—not touching her, not crowding her, just enough to make the space feel less wide.
“We’re not leaving her here unattended,” I say, because I can hear my father’s voice in my head. “This is just for a second—no pillows near her face, and no loose shit around her.”
Eli stands near the door, arms empty now, fingers flexing at his sides, staring at the bed with that same stunned look. But now that the baby isn’t in his arms anymore, and the adrenaline that kept him upright downstairs is slipping.
I can see it happening in real time. The set of his shoulders changes, and the tension in his jaw gets worse instead of better.
I open my mouth to ask what’s wrong, though that’s a stupid fucking question because obviously everything is wrong. But before I get the first word out, his face crumples.
He doesn’t make a sound at first; that’s what gets me.
If he shouted, if he cursed, if he punched the wall, I’d know what to do with that.
I know anger. I know fury. I know how to brace for it, take the hit, and steer it somewhere safer.
But Eli just folds in on himself in absolute silence, his mouth pulling tight as tears spill helplessly down his face.
It’s like watching a dam crack open under the pressure it can’t carry anymore.
“Eli,” I say, and I’m already moving before his name finishes leaving my mouth.
He tries to turn away, but I close the distance in three strides and catch him before he can get farther than half a step.
My arms go around him on instinct, one high across his back and shoulders, the other circling his waist and hauling him in hard against me. He comes without resistance and just collapses. Big football player, strong and stubborn as hell, and he breaks right into my chest.
“Hey,” I murmur, tightening my hold when he starts shaking. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. Breathe. I’ve got you.”
He shakes his head violently against me, fingers knotting in the back of my shirt so hard I feel the tug of the seams. He ducks his head, forehead hitting my shoulder, and then the sobs come for real. Still half-muted, still fought down, but there now—rougher and uglier than the silent tears.
It wrecks me so fast that I nearly stop breathing. I haven’t held him in months. Not really, not like this.
We’ve gone so stiff and awkward with each other that most days I’m careful about where I stand in a room to avoid accidentally brushing his shoulder. I’ve spent the better part of a year pretending I’m fine with the distance because the alternative is admitting how much it fucking hurts.
Admitting that I miss him every day, even when he’s standing right there.
Admitting that watching him choose Celeste over and over, even when she was treating him like shit, didn’t just piss me off because I knew she was bad news.
It gutted me because he stopped trusting me, and I lost him a piece at a time while smiling through it.
Now he’s in my arms again, crying so hard he can barely stay upright, and I hate the reason for it with a force that makes my teeth ache.
“It’s okay,” I tell him softly, because I need to give him something solid even if the words aren’t enough.
I smooth a hand up and down his back, slow and steady, the way I used to do with my nieces when they got overwhelmed and couldn’t calm their breathing.
“Breathe for me. You’re alright. She’s alright.
We’re going to get through the next part, one thing at a time. ”
He shakes his head against my shoulder so hard it brushes damp heat through my shirt. “No,” he says, the word torn up by crying. “No, no, no.”
“Talk to me,” I say. “Tell me what’s going on in your head.”
That was always my mistake with Eli, even before this whole Celeste disaster.
I’d assume I knew. Assume I saw enough on his face to understand the whole shape of the hurt, then come at him too hard while trying to fix what he hadn’t actually said out loud yet.
Right now, I force myself to stay still and keep my voice low.
“It’s not fine,” he says hoarsely. “Jules, it’s not fucking fine. My parents are going to fucking hate me.”
The words come out raw, and there it is—the real center of one part of his panic is ugly, childlike, and deeply rooted. I knew it was coming. I’ve known his family long enough to hear them in his voice even when he’s not repeating their exact words.
Catholic, strict, image-conscious, convinced that shame is a teaching tool and fear is a kind of discipline. Everything has rules, and everything has consequences. Everything goes through the filter of what people will think, what God will think, and how you could allow this to happen.
I hate them a little in this moment, and I don’t even care if that makes me unfair.
“They are not the first problem,” I say.
“They are in my head,” he shoots back, voice breaking again.
He steps away from me and swipes at his face with the heel of his hand, even when it does nothing.
“They’re the only thing in my fucking head, Julian.
My mom is gonna lose her mind. She’s gonna cry and pray and ask me how I could let this happen, then call Father Michael before she calls a fucking doctor.
My dad’s gonna tell me I dragged the whole family name through mud.
He’ll ask me what kind of man I am. He’ll ask me why I didn’t control myself.
And what the hell am I supposed to say? I don’t even know what fucking happened! ”
He laughs once, but it’s ripped and awful.
I stay quiet because he’s not finished. I know Eli when a dam breaks. The first rush is never the whole flood.