Julian
By the time I leave his apartment, I feel scraped hollow.
That’s the best way to put it. Not ruined, because ruined implies I was whole to begin with.
That’s part of what makes it so hard to call it what it is.
If it were only violence, only shouting, only bruises blooming dark, maybe I would’ve stopped lying to myself sooner.
Maybe I would’ve had something definitive to point at—the moment it became wrong.
But tonight there are no dark marks blooming over my ribs, no bite of pain when I breathe, no handprint on my throat. Just the same shameful heaviness in my body, and the sense that I’ve been used up and then thanked for the privilege of it.
That’s the sickest part. There’s nothing on me, and I somehow still feel dirtier than the nights he leaves bruises behind.
He was soft tonight, and it keeps making my stomach turn as I head down the hallway toward the elevator, my duffel slung over one shoulder, the new watch cool and alien against my wrist. Soft voice, soft hands, no edge in the questions, and no impatience when I hesitated.
Then he went sweet. Sweet enough that, for a few minutes, I almost hated myself even more because some fucked-up, starving part of me recognized tenderness and wanted to believe it counted for something.
It doesn’t.
He didn’t need to put his hands on me hard tonight because he already had me in his room. He already had me obedient and stripped down to a numb, detached version of myself that thanks him automatically at the end because gratitude is safer than honesty, and performance is safer than refusal.
The watch sits heavy on my wrist while I wait for the elevator, and every time I feel its weight, I want to rip it off.
He chose it carefully because he knows what I like.
Dark leather strap, clean face, expensive without screaming money.
The kind of thing another person might notice and say, “nice watch, man, where’d you get it?
” and I’d have to either lie through my teeth or tell the truth in a way that makes me sound complicit in my own humiliation.
He fastened it around my wrist himself, smiling that private smile he uses when he thinks he’s being generous, and told me he wanted me to wear it all the time now.
There had been something possessive in it, something so neatly disguised as affection that for half a beat my brain almost let it pass.
Then I heard myself say, “Thank you,” in that awful, polite voice I’ve started using with him, and I wanted to put my own fist through my mouth.
I leave feeling dirty and angry, used and stupid, and underneath all that, there’s always the same raw need to talk to someone.
To say this happened and have them look at me without that flicker of judgment I’m convinced would come if I ever stopped protecting it.
Luca offered. He saw too much in the locker room not to.
I could still call him now. I could call Killian, maybe, though that would turn into action before I even finished the first sentence. I could even—
No.
Not Eli.
My whole body rejects the thought on reflex because he has too much on him already. The last thing he needs is me dragging this filth into his room and making him hold it, too. I’ve already leaned too heavily on his existence without ever asking permission. I’m not adding this.
So, I drive home in silence with one hand clenched too tightly around the steering wheel.
The house is lit warm against the dark when I get home, every downstairs window glowing.
Home should feel like relief. Tonight, it mostly feels like another thing I have to fake my way through.
I sit in my car for a minute with both hands on the wheel, the watch on my wrist turned downward so I don’t have to look at it.
Inside, there’ll be noise. There’ll be somebody in the kitchen. There’ll be a question or two, probably casual, maybe nothing more than, “hey, you eat yet?” or, “everything okay?” And I do not have enough skin left for concern tonight.
Taking a breath, I pull it together the best I can and go in.
Ryan is in the living room with Adrian and some terrible reality show on low volume.
Liam is in the kitchen doing something with leftovers because that man would meal prep through the apocalypse.
Nobody stops me when I come through the door, probably because I keep my head down and my expression blank enough.
Even Ryan, patron saint of inappropriate timing, senses the neon danger sign behind my eyes and stays quiet.
Killian glances up from where he’s standing at the island with a glass of water in one hand, and that’s the closest I come to getting caught. His gaze flicks over me once, and for a heartbeat, I think he sees everything anyway.
He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I.
I take the stairs two at a time and keep moving even when I hear somebody else’s door open down the hall upstairs.
My room is dark when I push inside, and I strip off my clothes and go straight to the shower.
I take the watch off and set it on the sink before I step under the stream; seeing it there in the steam-fogged room makes my teeth grit. Even off my body it feels like a mark.
I scrub too hard, but that’s not new. The water runs hot enough to redden my skin, and still I stand under it longer than I should, palm braced against the tile, trying to get out of my own head.
Soap. Rinse. Repeat.
When I finally shut the water off, the bathroom is a haze of heat, and I still feel disgusting. Not physically. Not in any way a second shower would fix.
I towel off, pull on sweats and an old T-shirt, leave my hair damp, and pad back into my room without turning the light on. I don’t want brightness. I don’t want clarity. I want blankets and darkness and for the inside of my chest to stop scraping against itself.
I crawl into bed, turn onto my side, and stare at the wall.
For a while, I do a decent job of not crying.
That’s the stupid benchmark now. Not feeling better, or processing, or naming.
Just don’t cry and don’t make this one more thing that reduces you to some shaking, humiliated version of yourself in the dark.
My throat aches anyway.
I pick up my phone just to have something else to look at. Social media is exactly what it always is, and I scroll because movement feels better than stillness, because stillness lets memory back in.
It doesn’t work.
I drop the phone onto my chest and let out a slow breath through my nose. Then Luca’s face drifts up in my head from earlier this week. That look he gave me in the locker room—half concern, half patience.
You in danger? Tell Killian or me. Don’t do the stupid macho shit.
I close my eyes for a second. Then I grab the phone again and scroll to his contact.
Me: You free tomorrow?
The message sits there for half a second before I add another.
Me: Need to talk.
I stare at it one last time, then hit send before I can lose the nerve. The answer comes quicker than I expected.
Luca: Yeah. Anytime. You good?
I snort softly because, of course, that’s the first thing he asks. Straight to concern. Straight to the point.
Me: Not really. Tomorrow?
Luca: Tomorrow. I’m here for you, man.
That nearly gets me after all. I lock the phone and set it down on the mattress beside my head, breathing through the sudden pressure behind my eyes until it eases.
Tomorrow.
That’s manageable.
Tomorrow means I can stop holding the entire thing by the throat tonight and just survive until morning. It’s a coward’s postponement, maybe. But it’s still more than I’ve done before.
My body starts to sink at last, exhaustion flattening me from the inside out. I’m right at the edge of sleep when there’s a knock on my door.
My whole body goes cold before my brain catches up and remembers there is no scenario in which that man is knocking on my bedroom door inside the Sin Bin. Then the handle turns before I can answer, and the door opens a crack.
Eli stands there in the dim hall light, looking wrung out and tired. He’s in sweats and a T-shirt, hair mussed, and he pauses just inside the room, checking whether I’m awake enough before he comes any closer.
“Hey,” he says quietly. “You asleep?”
“Not yet.” My voice is rough from disuse and almost-sleep. I push myself up a little against the pillows and blink at him in the dim light. “Everything okay?”
He nods, and then half shrugs, which usually means no, not really, but nothing’s actively on fire. “Killian offered to look after Mila for the night so I can get some fucking sleep,” he says. “He said if I checked the monitor more than twice, he was revoking my parental rights.”
That earns him a small laugh before I can stop it. “Sounds generous.”
“Sounds threatening,” Eli mutters, but there’s affection tucked under it. He hesitates one more second, then closes the door behind him and comes over to the bed.
He doesn’t ask permission; he doesn’t need to. He just pulls back the covers on the empty side and slides in beside me with a tired sigh, settling onto his back like he’s done a hundred times before. It still feels bizarrely natural the second his shoulder brushes mine under the blankets.
My whole body goes very still. After the night I’ve had, after the apartment and the shower and the dark, the sudden warm reality of Eli in my bed feels so good it almost hurts. It’s the purest thing that’s happened to me in hours.
He turns his head slightly toward me. “You mind?”
“No,” I say immediately, and then softer because immediate might sound too eager, even though he’s too tired to read into it. “No, I don’t mind. But you know there’s a whole room down the hall with your name on it, right?”
“I know,” he says. “I didn’t want that room.”
He says it so plainly, an honesty in Eli that makes every simple statement land deeper than it should. I stare up at the ceiling because looking directly at him right now feels unsafe.
After a second, I ask, “How was your first day without Mila?”
He groans softly and throws an arm over his eyes. “Awful.”
I smile despite myself. “That bad?”
“That bad. I kept checking my phone like a psycho. Coach definitely got told something because he didn’t rip my head off when I missed cues. You and Luca need to stop conspiring behind my back.”
I grin at that. “We’ll take it under advisement.”
He moves his arm enough to glance at me. “So that’s a yes.”
“That’s a maybe.”
“That’s a yes,” he says again, too tired to sound properly accusatory.
I shrug one shoulder. “You looked like you were about two stress levels away from trying to call home from the huddle.”
He drops his arm back over his eyes and laughs softly. “Yeah. Fair.”
That sound of him being sleepy and unguarded in my bed feels unbearably good.
He keeps talking, voice getting lower and rougher as fatigue drags at it.
He tells me about training, about how weird it felt leaving Mila with Mrs. Alvarez, even though he knows she’s good, about how Roman apparently tried to explain baby burping techniques to her as if she hadn’t raised four children and six grandchildren already.
He tells me Mila took her bottle fine. Mrs. Alvarez called her “an observant little bean,” which has stuck in his head all evening for some reason.
That Killian actually took over, no complaints, just a bottle in one hand and his phone in the other while terrifying somebody over email.
That he felt guilty for enjoying a hot shower that lasted longer than four minutes.
As he talks, something in me unwinds that I didn’t realize was still clenched.
I’m ridiculously happy.
That’s the dumb truth of it. I’m lying here after one of the worst nights I’ve had in a while, with a new watch on my sink and shame still dried into my skin no matter how hard I scrubbed.
All it takes to make me feel lighter is Eli in my bed mumbling half-awake about his day and trusting me enough to come here when he could’ve slept anywhere else in the house.
He turns onto his side at some point, facing me now, one hand tucked under his cheek. In the dark, his heavy-lidded eyes are soft, hair falling over his forehead, mouth relaxed in a way it almost never is during the day.
The words start to slur slightly as he gets sleepier, his sentences losing structure, looping back once or twice before he corrects himself. He goes quiet for long enough that I think he’s done, but after a few seconds, he murmurs, “I’m glad I came in.”
The confession is so soft I almost think I imagined it.
I turn my head toward him. His eyes are closed. His face has gone slack in that vulnerable way sleep starts to pull from people before they’re all the way under. He looks younger—softer. So unbearably dear to me that I have to bite down on my own response.
“I’m glad too,” I answer anyway, just as quietly.
He hums something that might be an agreement. Then his breathing evens out by degrees, long and slow, until I realize he’s gone.
I stay still and let the happiness sit where the self-loathing had been trying to live earlier.