Eli
Julian takes me upstairs to his bedroom.
Clean laundry, cedar soap, him.
He shuts the door behind us, and the second we’re alone, something in me stops pretending it knows how to stand.
Julian doesn’t say anything at first; he just pulls me onto the bed with him and gets me under the blanket like there is a procedure for this kind of devastation, and he somehow knows it by instinct.
I end up on my side with my face pressed to his chest, his arms wrapped around me, one hand spread over the back of my head.
The room is dim, curtains half drawn against the late afternoon light. The house makes distant sounds beneath us, careful footsteps and low voices, the entire Sin Bin moving around my grief like it’s trying not to startle a wounded animal.
I hate that I’m the wounded animal.
I hate it more because it fits.
For a while, I don’t talk. I don’t cry properly either, not the way I did in Julian’s arms earlier, not the kind that tore out of me because the hurt was immediate. This is different. This is cold—a thing sinking slowly through layers I thought I’d already survived.
There’s tangible proof now—not suspicion or gaps. There’s no more maybe she did something, maybe I misunderstood, maybe I wanted something and hated myself after, maybe I should’ve known, maybe I should’ve stopped it.
Proof. Files. Chats. Lists. A video Julian had to close because he knew where it was going and wouldn’t let it keep happening in front of him, even months after the fact.
It was real and fucking planned. Celeste took something from me while smiling at me, then handed me my daughter through a legal letter like the whole thing was a mess she was tired of cleaning up.
And I love Mila.
I love my daughter more than anything—more than pride, more than sleep, more than the life I thought I was supposed to have.
Mila is warm weight, tiny hands, furious little noises, duck socks, and the way my whole chest eases when she settles against me.
She’s innocent, mine, and the best thing in my life in ways I didn’t know a person could be after four months.
And I am so fucking angry about how she came to be that it scares me.
It has nowhere clean to go because I won’t aim it at Mila.
The idea itself makes me sick. But I can’t separate her existence from the proof sitting downstairs, and I don’t know how to live with both truths inside me without one poisoning the other.
I’m happy I have her, but I’m horrified by how Celeste made that happen. I’m grateful and violated, in love and disgusted, father and victim, and none of those words know how to stand in the same room without clawing at each other.
Julian’s hand moves slowly over my hair. “You’re thinking too loud,” he says quietly.
I laugh bitterly into his shirt. “That’s a new one.”
“It’s not new. You’ve always done it.”
“Didn’t realize my trauma came with volume.”
His arms tighten around me. “Your trauma can fuck off. I meant you.”
I turn my face just enough that my cheek rests over his heartbeat. It’s steady under my ear, a strong, living rhythm that gives my body something else to count besides panic. “I don’t know how to feel,” I admit.
“You don’t have to pick one thing.”
“I know people say that.”
“I’m not people.”
That gets another sound out of me, closer to a breath than a laugh. His hand slides from my hair to the back of my neck, thumb pressing gently into the tense place at the base of my skull. I close my eyes despite myself.
“I’m so angry,” I say.
His chest rises under me. “You should be.”
“I love Mila.”
“I know.”
“I don’t regret her, but I hate Celeste. I hate her so much I don’t know what to do with it. I have proof now, and somehow it feels worse even though I needed proof. My body was there, and I wasn’t, not really, and now there’s a video proving it. I hate it even more that you had to see it.”
Julian cups the back of my head again. “Eli, look at me.”
I don’t want to. I do anyway.
His face is close, eyes dark with anger he’s holding back for my sake. I know that anger now. I know what it costs him to keep it from becoming the loudest thing in the room. It both makes me love him harder and hurt worse at the same time.
“I would watch every terrible thing in the world before I let you face it alone. I’m not glad I saw it, but I’m glad you didn’t have to.”
My throat closes, and I kiss him because I can’t answer that any other way.
It’s not soft. I don’t have soft in me right now.
My mouth crashes into his with desperation and heat and grief all tangled so tightly I don’t know where one ends, and another begins.
Julian makes a rough sound of surprise, but he kisses me back for half a second on instinct, hand tightening at my neck before he catches himself.
I feel the restraint come into him. The carefulness.
The concern. It makes something frantic in me push harder.
I climb over him before he can sit up, straddling his hips with the blanket twisted between us, both hands braced on his chest as I kiss him again.
I need his mouth. His body. His warmth. I need something that feels like now instead of then, choice instead of proof, want instead of a video I never saw but will feel forever.
Julian’s hands come to my waist, but he holds me steady instead of pulling me down, and that makes me whine against his mouth in frustration.
“Eli,” he says, turning his head enough to break the kiss. “Baby, wait.”
I chase his lips. “No.”
“Sweetheart—”
“Jules, please.” I press my forehead to his, breathing hard, hands fisted in his shirt. “Make me forget.”
His whole body locks beneath me. Even as fucked up as I am, I hear what I said and how it landed.
Julian’s eyes close for one second, his jaw tightening as if the words hurt him physically.
When he opens them again, the want is still there because we’re both alive and human and I’m sitting on him, but worry is stronger.
“No,” he says softly.
The refusal hits me like a slap, even though his voice is gentle. I start to pull back, humiliation flaring so fast it burns. “Forget it.”
His hands tighten at my waist immediately, keeping me from bolting without forcing me down. “That’s not what I mean.”
“You said no.”
“I said no to making you forget,” he says, and his voice stays steady even when mine shakes. “I’m not going to use sex to bury this for you.”
Something in me twists, angry and ashamed and desperate all at once. “I’m not asking you to use me.”
“I know.” His eyes never leave mine. “That’s why I’m still talking.”
I hate him a little then—just enough to be furious that he loves me too well to give me the easy bad answer.
I look away, breathing hard. “This is my choice.”
“Yes,” Julian says immediately. “It is.”
“Then why are you acting like I can’t make it?”
“I’m not.” He slides one hand slowly up my side, then back down. “Baby, I’m asking what choice you’re making. Because ‘make me forget’ sounds like you’re trying to leave your body, and I can’t be part of that. I won’t.”
I close my eyes at his words. It hurts being loved like this… It hurts being known like this.
“I want my first time to be mine,” I say, opening my eyes again. “That’s what I mean. I know what you’re hearing. I know how it sounds, okay? But it’s not only that. I’m angry, and I’m fucked up, and I don’t want to think about her, but I also want…”
I stop and swallow, forcing the rest out because if I don’t say it clearly, he’ll protect me from something I actually need. “I want my first time to be a memory with the person I love, not some video of something I couldn’t consent to.”
Julian’s breath leaves him slowly. I press on before fear makes me stop.
“I know there’s proof now, but I still don’t remember it.
My body was there, but I wasn’t. So maybe legally or technically or whatever, someone could say I’ve had sex.
But I haven’t. Not awake and actually wanting or choosing it.
” My voice breaks, and I hate that it does, but I keep going.
“I want my first time to be with you. Because I love you, and because you’ll stop if I say stop, and because you’ll ask me if I’m okay until it’s annoying, and because I actually want you so much I can’t think straight.”
Julian stares at me and his hands flex once at my waist. “You love me,” he says.
I let out a broken laugh because of all the things to get stuck on; of course it’s that. “Yeah, asshole. I told you that already.”
“You said it during a trauma confession.”
“And now I’m saying it while straddling you after a worse trauma confession, so apparently I have a brand.” I wipe a hand over my face, frustrated by the wetness in my eyes. “I love you, Jules. I don’t know if saying it right now makes it heavier or messier, but I do.”
His eyes shine. That almost takes me apart more than anything else tonight.
“I love you too,” he says.
It’s not the first time I’ve known. Maybe it isn’t even the first time he’s said it in all the ways that weren’t English. But hearing it now, directly, while the worst parts of my life are still breathing down the door, makes my chest crack open around warmth instead of pain.
I bend forward and kiss him again, and he lets me. The kiss is still heated because we’re still us, but the frantic edge changes.
His hand comes up to cup my face, thumb brushing my cheek. I feel him asking without words whether I’m here. I answer by slowing down, by breathing against his mouth, by unclenching my fingers from his shirt and spreading my palm over his chest instead.
When he pulls back, he keeps his forehead against mine.
“I need rules,” he says, his thumb moving over my cheek again.
“If we do anything tonight, we go slow. You tell me what feels good and what doesn’t.
If you go quiet in a way I don’t like, I stop.
If you say stop, I stop. If you say red, I stop immediately and don’t ask questions until you’re ready.
If you say yellow, I slow down or change what I’m doing.
If you say green, I keep going. If I ask for a color, you answer with one. ”
My throat tightens at the care in it. “You’ve thought about this.”
“Yes,” he says honestly. “Not because I was planning this tonight. Because I think about how to keep you safe.”
I lean down and press my face into the side of his neck because I need one second to hide from being loved that clearly. His arms go around me, holding me close.
“I don’t want to be fragile,” I whisper.
“You’re not fragile,” Julian says into my hair. “You’re hurt. Those aren’t the same.”
I breathe him in, and the worst of the shaking finally starts to ease. Not gone but eased enough that I can tell the difference between panic and want again. Enough that my body remembers I’m on Julian’s lap because I put myself here, and his hands are safe at my back.
I lift my head. “Green.”
His eyes darken instantly. “Yeah?” he asks quietly.
I nod once. “But I don’t want you to make me forget.” I look at him and let the truth settle somewhere calmer inside me before I answer. “I want you to help me remember this instead.”