25. Julian
Julian
Being in love should not make a man this stupid.
I catch myself smiling like an idiot at absolutely nothing and have to physically drag my face back into something respectable before one of the guys can ask questions.
It’s humiliating, honestly. I spent years imagining what it would do to me if Eli ever looked at me the way I looked at him, if he ever wanted me back in any way that crossed the line from friendship into something more.
Somehow, the answer turns out to be this: I become a fucking disaster in the stupid, grinning, distracted, floating-through-my-own-life sense.
I keep thinking about the way he looked at me in his bed with sleepy eyes and my mouth still warm from his. I keep hearing him asking what Liefling means, then watching that realization hit his face and turn into something so soft and hungry that he kissed me first the second time.
I am gone. That’s the problem. My whole body feels lighter.
When Eli brushes his hand over the back of my neck in the kitchen while reaching past me for a bottle, my brain goes blank for a second, and I nearly forget what I’m holding.
Every glance we steal across the living room or the hallway or practice feels like we’re getting away with something huge even though, technically, all we’ve done is kiss.
We keep acting mostly normal in front of the house because Mila still needs bottles and diapers, and nobody in the Sin Bin needs to watch us try to figure out what we are with our tongues halfway down each other’s throats.
It’s not a public thing yet and probably won’t be for a while.
That part is fine with me. I don’t need an audience.
What I do need is, apparently, to stop wandering through the week with my guard down because I’ve got Eli’s mouth still haunting mine and his smile doing permanent structural damage to my self-control.
It’s Thursday afternoon, warm enough that the air around the athletics building feels thick and stale; cloying campus heat that clings to the concrete and makes everyone just a little meaner by default.
We’re all supposed to meet at the gym before lifting—me, Eli, Luca, Ryan, and whoever else drifts in on time for once.
I’m cutting across the side path behind athletics because it’s faster.
I’ve let myself stop scanning every shadow, parked car, and blind corner the way I’ve been doing for weeks.
It’s not even a full lapse, just a softening.
A stupid, human, dangerous softening because the last few nights have been so full of warmth that I forgot fear can wait patiently in the dark until you stop looking over your shoulder.
“Julian.”
Every muscle in my body goes tight so fast it feels mechanical. I stop walking immediately, one foot still half lifted, and turn my head toward the side of the building where the maintenance entrance cuts the brick wall into a blind little recess of concrete and shadow.
Blakely is standing there in slacks and a polo with the athletic department logo stitched over the chest, looking put together, respectable, and composed. The kind of man parents would trust with their sons because he says all the right things under bright lights.
My stomach drops, and my body wants to do what it’s trained itself to do around him for months now: freeze, assess, soften, survive. Then another feeling comes in under it, one that’s been getting stronger every day since Eli kissed me back.
No.
I lower my gym bag from my shoulder into a firmer grip and say, “What do you want?”
His expression doesn’t change much, but I know him well enough now to see the anger under the calm exterior. It’s in the set of his mouth and the way he squares himself a little more when he hears my tone. “You’ve been ignoring me for three weeks.”
I shrug. “Yeah, I know.”
He studies me for a beat as if he’s waiting for shame to show up and smooth this over for him. When it doesn’t, his voice goes colder. “That isn’t how this works.”
A week ago, maybe even three days ago, that line would’ve gotten under my skin exactly the way he meant it to.
It would’ve dragged old reflexes to the surface.
Apology. De-escalation. Some version of, “Yes, I know, just let me explain.” Today, all I can think about is how tired I am of his confidence in thinking that he gets to define the shape of my life.
“It actually is how it works now,” I say. “You text. I don’t answer. That’s the new system.”
His eyes narrow. “Watch your mouth.”
I laugh, and the sound of it surprises both of us. “You don’t get to talk to me that way anymore,” I say.
He steps forward then, just one measured step, but enough that the space between us tightens. “Julian.”
That fucking tone—that warning-soft one.
That blend of command and intimacy he uses when he thinks he can still pull me apart with the right voice alone.
I hate how well I know it, but I love that it doesn’t work this time.
Fear skitters through me anyway, but it doesn’t own the whole space between us.
“I’m done,” I tell him.
He has the nerve to laugh in my face. “You don’t mean that.”
“Actually, I do. It’s over,” I say again. “Whatever you thought this was, whatever version you’ve been telling yourself where I keep coming back and you keep getting away with it, that’s done. Don’t call me, don’t text me, don’t corner me, and stay the fuck away from me.”
His jaw tightens hard enough to show. “You’re making a mistake.”
“No,” I say. “You made the mistake of thinking I would be your fucking punching bag forever.”
He moves fast after that, getting close enough that I can smell his cologne. My fight-or-flight screams when his hand catches the front of my shirt and shoves me back against the brick wall before my body fully processes the motion.
It isn’t the hardest he’s ever grabbed me, but the shock of it on campus in daylight, so close to everybody else, does something ugly to my nerves.
“You ungrateful little—”
My hands hit his chest and drive him back one full step against the side wall by the maintenance door, and the second I feel him give under the force of it, my mind goes violently, beautifully clear.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I snarl.
The words come out louder than I mean them to. Right now, I feel bigger than him—every second of shame he tried to feed me just burned off in one shove and left behind something he doesn’t know how to handle.
Then his face twists in rage.
I know that look; I know exactly what comes after that look, and my body starts preparing for impact before my mind catches up. I’ve learned his tells too well.
He’s going to hit me.
“Julian!”
Eli’s voice cracks across the lot before Blakely can move.
I turn on instinct and see the guys coming fast from the gym path—Eli first, pale and furious and already moving, Luca half a step behind him with that captain stride that somehow looks calm even when it’s not, Ryan farther off and confused as hell, and Killian right there too, hands in his pockets and murder on his face.
I don’t know who spotted us first or how much they saw, only that the timing is perfect enough to feel like divine intervention and terrible enough to make my knees go weak after the fact.
Blakely sees them and drops his hand from the reflexive half-curl it had started into. He steps back, smoothing his shirt as if resetting his image will somehow erase what just happened.
Eli doesn’t slow down at all.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he demands, and there’s no mistaking who he’s talking to.
Luca catches Eli by the arm before he can fully launch himself into the other man’s throat. The move is smooth and practiced, almost casual, if you don’t know how much force Luca can put behind a grip when he wants to.
“Easy,” he says, low and hard, though there’s nothing remotely calm in his face either. “Not here.”
“I’ll kill him right here,” Eli snaps.
Ryan looks between all of us, brain not catching up. “Hold on, what the hell is happening?” he asks, frowning, then turns to Blakely. “Coach?”
Watching the confusion hit him in real time makes my stomach turn sour all over again. This is what power does. It hides in roles people trust.
Blakely straightens his shirt and goes for dignity so fast it would be laughable if I weren’t still shaky with adrenaline. “There seems to be some misunderstanding.”
Eli actually laughs, but there’s no humor in his tone. “Yeah? Looked pretty clear to me.”
Blakely’s eyes cut to him with immediate contempt, which is exactly the wrong move when Killian King is standing six feet away.
Killian looks at Blakely with that dead-flat expression that says he already knows enough and what he doesn’t know yet is only a scheduling issue. “You should leave,” he says.
Blakely looks at him the way men look at boys they think haven’t earned the right to speak in grown-up conflicts. He has no idea who the fuck he’s standing in front of. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Killian’s mouth twitches once, but there’s nothing close to amusement in it. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
Eli tries to jerk free of Luca’s hold. “I’ll make it concern me.”
Luca tightens his grip just enough to stop him without making a scene of it. “Not here,” he says again. “Not like this.”
I know he’s right. Eli knows he’s right too, which only makes the fury on his face worse because there’s nowhere for it to go. His eyes cut to me for half a second, and what I see there almost undoes me all over again.
Blakely’s gaze moves across the group, probably calculating rank, risk, and which one of us is most likely to be a problem in the shortest amount of time. He makes the mistake of landing on Killian last.
“You leave now, and maybe the next conversation we have about this happens somewhere with witnesses and paperwork,” Killian says. “Or you keep standing close to him, and I stop being polite.”
Blakely scoffs, but it’s thinner than he wants it to be. “You’re threatening me?”
Killian gives him the smallest tilt of the head. “No. I’m promising that whatever you thought you had under control is over. Walk away now while you still get to pretend this was a misunderstanding.”
I don’t think Ryan has ever heard Killian sound like that before. Judging by the expression on his face, he doesn’t know whether to be confused, scared, or ready to throw up.
Blakely knows, though. That’s the thing I clock immediately.
He finally looks rattled because of the social terrain shifting under his feet.
Killian is exactly the kind of wealthy, well-connected nightmare that turns “misunderstandings” into career-ending realities if you push him in the wrong direction.
Whatever he sees in all of us, when added together, makes him recalculate.
He smooths one hand down the front of his polo and says, “You should all think very carefully about what you’re assuming.”
Eli takes one hard step forward before Luca can fully stop him. “We’re not assuming a fucking thing.”
“Eli,” Luca says sharply, and there’s enough command in it that Eli actually checks himself.
Blakely’s gaze flicks to me once. Whatever he expects to find there—fear, shame, or second thoughts—isn’t enough to keep him rooted. He backs off first in the only way men like him ever do, by pretending retreat is a choice he was already considering.
“This conversation isn’t over,” he says to me, trying for control and landing closer to a threat.
“The fuck it isn’t,” Killian answers before I can.
Blakely scowls and leaves just fast enough that the retreat is obvious to anyone with a brain. He turns and walks back toward the building with stiff, measured steps, and the second he’s ten feet away, my knees almost give out from the adrenaline drop.
Eli yanks free of Luca finally and crosses to me in three hard steps, taking my face in both of his hands. “Did he touch you?”
I shake my head. “I’m fine,” I say automatically.
Luca makes a harsh sound that could be a laugh if anything about this were funny. “Bullshit.”
Ryan still looks dazed. “Somebody needs to tell me what’s going on, like right now, because that was Coach Blakely, and either I completely hallucinated that or he just had Julian pinned against a wall.”
The silence after that is no longer survivable.
I feel it settle in me with a kind of exhausted certainty.
This is the moment. I’m done pretending pieces of it can stay hidden without poisoning everything else.
Ryan deserves the truth if he’s going to be dragged into this orbit.
There’s no good reason left to keep pretending this is still my burden alone.
“Tonight,” I say, and three faces turn toward me fully. “I’ll tell you all tonight.”
Eli’s expression shifts, anger bending around worry. “Jules, you don’t have to—”
“Yeah,” I cut in quietly, looking at him first because that matters. “I do.”
Ryan looks even more confused now, which would almost be funny if the rest of us weren’t standing in the blast radius of my life. He glances toward the direction Blakely disappeared, then back at me, and I watch understanding begin to gather in horrible, uneven pieces.
I can’t answer him here. Not in the open, and my whole body is still humming from the confrontation. So I just grip my bag a little tighter and nod once toward the gym.
Ryan drags both hands over his face. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah,” Killian says, finally starting toward the gym. “Get used to that feeling.”
We fall into motion because what else are we supposed to do in the moment after a threat leaves? The gym doors are only twenty yards away. The whole campus keeps moving as if nothing happened, and the normalcy of it all feels obscene.
I keep my eyes forward and walk anyway.
Tonight, I’m going to tell them everything.