21. Julian
Julian
I set my cue on the pool table before I trust myself to say anything, which turns out to be a mistake because the second my hands are empty, all I can feel is the space between us.
The room has gone too quiet for something as stupid as a game of pool.
Eli is standing on the opposite side of the table with his cue still in one hand, shoulders loose in theory but nothing about him is loose in practice. His eyes flick to mine and away again, then come back slower this time. My pulse is beating hard enough that I can feel it in my throat.
He tilts his head slightly, and when he speaks, his voice is quieter than it was a second ago, stripped of most of the teasing but not all of it.
“Winner gets whatever he wants for the night,” he says, dragging the cue tip once over the floor as if he needs something to do with his hands too. “So, what do you want, Julian?”
The question should be playful. It should land like a joke or maybe a challenge, something we can both still pretend is harmless if one of us loses our nerve. Instead, it settles low and heavy between us because the way he says it makes it absolutely fucking clear that he knows what he’s doing.
He starts walking around the corner of the table toward me, each step measured enough that I can track the way his gaze stays on mine now. When he reaches my side of the table, I still haven’t moved. I’m not sure I could, even if the room were on fire.
He stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him. Then, with a motion that is too deliberate to be accidental, he sets one hand behind me on the edge of the pool table and leans in just enough to crowd the space between us.
Jesus Christ.
My brain offers the phrase with all the useless clarity in the world while the rest of me just stands there and takes the hit.
Up close, he smells like soap and the faint laundry detergent from his shirt.
His hair is falling a little over his forehead from where he kept dragging his hands through it during the game.
“You’re being very fucking strange,” I say, and my voice comes out rough.
A tiny smile ghosts at one corner of his mouth, and he lets out one breath that sounds dangerously close to a laugh. “So, what do you want, Julian?” he says again, but his voice has dropped to a low timbre I’m not used to hearing aimed at me.
The question should not be put back on me; that feels unfair.
It feels cruel in the most beautiful way possible, because he’s looking at me like he already knows the answer and is trying to see if I’m stupid enough to say it out loud.
I look at his mouth before I can stop myself, and the second I do, Eli notices.
His eyes darken so subtly I might have missed it if I wasn’t already drowning.
You.
The word flashes through me whole and bright and impossible, but I don’t say it. “You should really stop asking questions you’re starting to know the answer to,” I say instead.
Eli audibly sucks in a breath, and his eyes flick to my lips before they slowly drag up and meet my gaze. The air itself feels tense enough to hum.
“Why don’t you show me the answer?” he asks.
My hand twitches at my side. If I touch him now, everything changes. There is no version of this that becomes harmless again once it crosses that line. I know that with bone-deep certainty. I also know I want it badly enough that my whole body is ringing with the effort of not reaching for him.
Of course, that’s when Eli glances down at my mouth again, and I swear I stop breathing. When his eyes come back up to mine, there’s no innocence left in his face at all. Just heat, nerves, and the kind of wanting that makes a man stupid.
His voice drops even lower. “Julian...”
My hand comes up before I fully decide to move, fingers brushing lightly against his hip where his shirt has ridden up a little. The skin there is warm. Alive. Eli sucks in a breath through his teeth and goes very still, but he doesn’t move away. He doesn’t even pretend to.
“You need to tell me to stop,” I say, because I’m shaking now and the only thing more dangerous than wanting him is wanting him while he’s still halfway frightened by the wanting itself.
His eyes stay on mine. “Do you want to stop?”
No.
The word pounds through me so hard it almost hurts.
But what I actually say is, “That’s not an answer.”
His mouth twitches faintly. Under any other circumstance he’d call me a hypocrite and mean it affectionately. “I don’t want you to stop,” he says after a beat, and his voice is barely above a whisper now.
I slide my hand a little farther around his side, pulling him closer. Eli’s whole body is wound so tight it feels like one wrong move will either send him crashing into me or running out of the room. I don’t know which possibility scares me more.
He leans in first—maybe an inch, maybe less. But enough that I catch the full warmth of his breath now. Enough that if I moved at all, just a little, our mouths would touch.
“Jules,” he says again, and that’s not my name anymore. It’s a surrender.
I have imagined kissing him in a hundred different cruel little daydreams over the years. Angry. Desperate. Drunk. Sweet. Impossible. None of those fantasies prepared me for this. For how quiet and careful it is, and how much my chest hurts from the wanting before I’ve even gotten what I want.
I lean in too and lift my free hand slowly enough that he can stop me if he wants to.
He doesn’t. I brush my knuckles once along the side of his jaw, and his eyes flutter just slightly at the contact before they lock back on mine.
He’s shaking. It’s almost nothing, but I feel it there in the tension of his body, and the way his mouth parts on a breath.
We are so close now that there is no world left outside this one. No house. No den. No pool table. No week of messages in my pocket or fear in my spine or anything except Eli Matthews in front of me with his hand braced behind my side and his mouth one inch from mine, breath skimming my lips.
Then footsteps hit the hall, coming straight toward the den, and the spell breaks so violently it feels physical.
My hand drops from his face. He takes a step back at the exact same time the den door swings inward hard enough to crack the silence in half. Ryan barrels halfway in with his phone in one hand and zero awareness in his skull.
“Has anyone seen the—” He stops dead, looking between us with the kind of confused slowness that means his brain is definitely going to catch up in the next three seconds. “Why do you both look like that?”
I step back so fast I nearly clip the corner of the pool table with my hip.
Eli turns away first, grabbing his cue even though the game is clearly over. His face is flushed all the way down his neck now, and if Ryan were any smarter, he’d see everything. Thank God he isn’t.
“Look like what?” Eli says, which would sound more convincing if his voice weren’t half a note too high.
Ryan squints at us. “Like I interrupted a hostage negotiation.”
I snatch my cue from where I left it, set it back in the rack with far more force than necessary, and grab the first excuse that presents itself.
“You did,” I mutter. “He cheats at pool and then acts shocked when I call him on it.”
“That’s not even remotely what’s happening,” Ryan says.
“Cool,” I answer, already heading for the door. “Good talk.”
“Julian—” Eli starts.
I don’t stop.
That’s the problem with almost getting the one thing you’ve wanted for too long. Almost is unbearable. Almost after years is worse. Almost with Eli—after all the weeks of weirdness and heat and watching him wake up to whatever he’s feeling—is enough to turn my whole body into a raw nerve.
So, I bolt fast and don’t look back, leaving the den before I do something even dumber, like turn around and finish what we started in front of a witness who can’t keep a secret to save his own life.
I make it halfway down the hall before I stop with one hand braced against the wall while my pulse tries to hammer itself out through my ribs.
Fuck.
Fuck.
My fingers touch my mouth without permission, and that somehow makes it worse because we didn’t even kiss. We didn’t. We came so close the air between us changed shape, and I can still feel the almost of it.
A few seconds later, I hear footsteps in the den again, lighter now, followed by Ryan’s voice fading into some complaint about missing a charger or a snack or whatever the hell he actually came in for. Then there’s silence. No one follows me.
I don’t know whether that’s a relief or a disappointment.
Probably both.
I straighten slowly and drag a hand over the back of my neck, forcing myself to breathe. My whole body still wants to go back. That’s the worst part. Not the interruption or even the panic. The want. It’s still there, hot and impossible, and no longer deniable in any direction.
Eli wanted that too.
I close my eyes for one second, then push off the wall and head upstairs before I can change my mind and go looking for him again.
Because if I see him tonight, and he looks at me the way he looked at me over that table, I’m not sure I’ll stop the second time.