24. Eli
Eli
I’m half on top of Julian in the gray, fragile quiet before the house wakes up properly, one of my arms braced beside his shoulder, my leg still tangled with his under the blanket, my mouth still warm from his.
Mila is asleep in her bassinet a few feet away, the white noise machine humming softly, and the room carrying that strange early-morning stillness where everything feels suspended and more honest than it does in full daylight.
The old me would be having a breakdown and scrambling backward off him, apologizing, demanding we talk, trying to shove the whole thing into words before it becomes too real.
That’s what the version of me raised on shame and rules and the constant pressure to name everything before I felt it would probably still be expected to do.
Instead, I’m just… here.
Warm. Awake. Breathing a little too hard, sure, but not panicking. And when I really let myself sit with that, I understand something that makes my chest feel strange and full all at once.
I don’t want to panic. I don’t want to run from this.
I don’t want to stuff it back down, call it a mistake, and pretend that what just happened came out of nowhere.
Maybe if I’d woken up kissing anybody else, I would’ve flinched so hard I’d leave bruises.
Maybe if it had been random, or reckless, or disconnected from the rest of my life, I’d already be halfway into a spiral.
But this is Julian. My best friend. The person who has been there through every version of me, including the ones I barely wanted to know myself.
The person I told I was in love with last night without planning to, without meaning to, and maybe without even realizing until the truth was already out in the room with us.
That part hits me fresh now, lying over him in the low morning light.
I told him. I actually said it out loud. To his face. Then I doubled down and admitted the rest of it in pieces because apparently once I stop lying, I really fucking stop.
I never thought about it in those exact words before last night, and that’s true. I never sat down and consciously said, ‘Yes, I am in love with Julian West.’ But I obviously already knew. Some part of me had known for a while now, and maybe some deeper part had known for much longer than that.
I look back now, and there are too many signs.
Too many moments that only make sense if I stop pretending my feelings for him were ever simple.
The way losing him felt akin to grief, and how getting him back felt like breathing again.
My body never really learned how to treat him like ordinary space, and the idea of him with someone else always made something dark and unreasonable move in me that I never understood.
I suppose I knew. I just didn’t let myself say it until I had no room left to hide from it.
Julian’s looking at me carefully, as if he’s giving me room to wake up all the way and decide whether I’m going to bolt now that the kiss is over and we’re both conscious enough to understand what happened.
There’s something cautious in his face beneath all the warmth.
Not guarded exactly. More like he wants this enough to be afraid of pushing one inch too hard and watching it break.
His thumb moves once against my back, a tiny stroke that feels more intimate than it should.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
I huff out a small laugh. “That’s funny coming from you.”
His mouth shifts slightly. “That’s not an answer.”
I let my eyes drift over his face one more time before I answer, because apparently, I get to do that now. “Yeah,” I say. “Actually, yeah.”
The caution in him eases by a degree. Not all the way. Just enough that I see it. But then my attention is caught by one word.
Liefling.
He called me that again after our kiss. He’s said it to me a thousand times over the years, or at least enough that it became part of the fabric of us before I ever thought to question it.
It always sounded soft in his mouth, roughened by sleep or laughter or irritation depending on the moment, and I’ve just let it live there without ever properly asking what it meant.
I blink at him. “What does Liefling mean?”
To my absolute delight, Julian West actually blushes. It’s a warmth rising over his cheekbones and down the side of his neck that I probably only catch because I’m inches from his face and looking at him with the kind of attention that feels almost indecent.
“No way,” I murmur. “Did I actually manage to make you blush?”
His eyes narrow slightly, but there’s no real heat in them. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I absolutely am.” I smile before I can stop myself. “So, what does it mean?”
He lets out one slow breath and glances away for half a second like he’s considering whether he can dodge. Then he looks back at me and says, very calmly, “It means sweetheart.”
My first reaction is not even embarrassment—it’s shock.
Pure, unfiltered, how-the-fuck-did-I-not-know-that-sooner shock.
I stare at him while the meaning settles into all the places it should’ve settled years ago.
Jules calling me Liefling in high school after football games.
Julian muttering it under his breath when I was stressed over exams. The soft way he used it in the driveway after my parents.
The way it always felt heavier than just a casual nickname, and I still somehow never forced myself to examine it because maybe, deep down, I knew I wouldn’t survive the answer cleanly.
“Sweetheart,” I repeat blankly.
Julian gives me the smallest, most helpless little half shrug. “Yeah.”
“You’ve been calling me that since high school.”
He squirms under me. “Yeah.”
“And I’m only finding this out now?”
He lifts one brow. “I honestly assumed you knew it meant something sappy.”
I actually laugh, because what else am I supposed to do with that? “Julian, I thought it was just… I don’t know. A thing you said.”
“It was a thing I said,” he replies dryly. “In another language. One you never bothered to ask me about until now.”
I stare at him for another second, then drop my forehead lightly to his shoulder because the full weight of my own stupidity finally catches up with me.
“Jesus Christ.” I let out a muffled laugh into his shoulder. “I’m feeling really stupid now.”
He moves enough under me that I have to lift my head again if I want to keep looking at him, which I do. “Why?”
“Because you’ve been calling me sweetheart since I was, like, sixteen and I somehow never put that together.” I study his face, still faintly pink, and the fond disbelief in me grows sharper. “How did I not realize that sooner?”
His mouth twitches. “You were very busy pretending not to understand a lot of things.”
I can’t even argue, so I just look at him and let myself feel all of it at once.
The years of this. The buried meaning. The hidden softness sitting in plain sight while I stumbled around trying to make myself fit into a life that never sat right.
The sheer ridiculousness that he has apparently been in love with me long enough to be calling me sweetheart in another language, and I still needed half my life to explode before I got the message.
A wave of tenderness hits me so hard it almost feels physical.
Before I can overthink it, I lean down and kiss him. This time I do it awake, with no waking haze to blame later. I kiss him because I want to, because I finally want to give something back, instead of always receiving him with my eyes half shut and my heart too scared.
Julian makes a quiet sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.
The kiss is different from the first one.
I know what I’m doing now, or at least I know that I’m choosing it.
I let myself feel the exact warmth of his lips, the way his breath catches just before he kisses me back, the soft slide of his hand from between my shoulders to the back of my neck as if he can’t help guiding me closer.
There’s no hesitation in him once he realizes I mean it. The caution drops away enough that the kiss deepens naturally, his mouth opening under mine with a hunger that is somehow still careful with me.
I did not know kissing your best friend would feel like coming home and jumping off a cliff at the same time.
His hand tightens once at my neck, and mine slides down to his chest because I need somewhere to put all the heat rushing through me. I can feel his heartbeat there, hard and fast under my palm, and the reality of that nearly undoes me.
This is real. This is really Julian under me, kissing me back like he’s wanted this long enough to recognize it the second I offer it to him.
He wants me. God, I know he wants me. I can feel it in the way his mouth moves against mine, in the rough little sound that slips out of him when I kiss him deeper, in the heat of his body beneath me. But even now, Julian still handles me like I’m something worth being careful with.
That thought wrecks me.
I kiss him harder because I don’t know what else to do with the feeling. My hand spreads over his chest, then slips higher, feeling the hard muscle under his shirt, the warmth of his skin, the way his breathing goes uneven when I drag my thumb lightly over his nipple.
Julian’s fingers tighten at the back of my neck, and he kisses me back with this low, hungry patience that feels almost unfair. He’s not rushing me. He’s not taking over. He’s just there, matching me, giving me exactly enough to make my head spin and my whole body feel too full for my skin.
His leg is still between mine, and when I shift again, our cocks brush, and it drags a broken sound straight out of my throat.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, kissing, in soft, heated little bursts, pausing only long enough to breathe and look at each other and then going right back because apparently neither of us has any interest in pretending at restraint this morning.
I tip my forehead against his and laugh under my breath, though there’s no real humor in it. “I seriously cannot believe you’ve been calling me sweetheart in another language for years and I never fucking clocked it.”
Julian’s hand moves slowly down my back and settles warmly at my waist. “To be fair, you were busy.”
“That is not fair,” I murmur. “That makes me sound less stupid than I was.”
His mouth twitches. “You were not stupid.”
I lift my head enough to look at him. “Julian, you literally gave me a term of endearment in another language and used it for years.”
“Yeah.”
“And I just let that happen.”
“You also let me carry your books through half of high school because you said I walked faster,” he says. “You’re selectively clueless when it suits you.”
A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it, warm and quiet and dangerously happy. “Wow. So, this has been torture for you for a long time, huh?”
He looks at me for a second too long, and all the teasing softens right out of him. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “A pretty long fucking time.”
My throat tightens. “I’m sorry for not seeing you sooner.” The words come out rougher than I meant for them to. “For not understanding what was right in front of me. For…” I stop and shake my head once because there are too many things in that list, and none of them fit neatly. “For hurting you.”
Julian’s expression changes in a way that almost hurts to look at. He reaches up and cups the side of my face, thumb brushing lightly over my cheekbone.
“Liefling,” he says, and now that I know exactly what it means, it goes through me in a whole new way. “You seeing me now is enough.”
It shouldn’t be enough. Not after everything. Not after how long he carried all of it. Not after how long I stood in my own way. But the way he says it makes me believe he means it, and that only makes my chest ache harder.
I kiss him again, and he makes another quiet sound and turns his head just enough to deepen it.
I feel the smile that almost catches between us when my hand slides into his hair.
His curls are warm and sleep-soft under my fingers, and the intimacy of that nearly gets me more than anything else has so far.
Then Mila gives a bright, happy little gurgle from the bassinet.
I break the kiss with a helpless laugh and turn my head toward the sound. She’s awake now, wide-eyed and perfectly content—one tiny hand waving in the air like she’s announcing herself to the room after the longest, most patient wait of her little life.
Julian laughs too, low and breathless beneath me. “Her timing is impeccable.”
Another happy little sound comes from the bassinet, followed by the unmistakable wriggle that means she’s got about thirty seconds before happiness turns into demands.
I shift back reluctantly, and the second I do, I feel how warm my face is, how hard my heart is still pounding, how dangerously easy it would be to just climb right back over him and forget the rest of the world exists. Julian watches me with a look that says he’s having the exact same problem.
I sit up slowly, still looking at him, and it hits me all over again, how stupidly beautiful he is. Rumpled, kissed-flushed, eyes softer than I think I’ve ever seen them and somehow still full of enough heat to make my stomach drop.
I shake my head once in quiet disbelief. “You’re beautiful, Jules,” I mutter.
That actually makes him blush again, which might become my new favorite thing on the planet.
“Go get your daughter,” he says in a rough tone and pushes me away.
I laugh and lean down just long enough to press one last quick kiss to his mouth before I push myself off the bed and reach into the bassinet for Mila.
She comes up warm and wiggly and immediately nuzzles into my chest, her little foot pressing against my stomach while she makes another pleased little noise.
When I turn back around, Julian is propped on one elbow watching us both with this look on his face that makes something in me settle in the deepest place I’ve got.
My best friend. My Jules. The guy who’s been right here all along.