Julian #3
My heart lurches, but I don’t hesitate. “The man I love.”
Eli closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them, his expression is stripped down in that way that still feels new between us. He hasn’t quite learned how to hide from me now that he’s decided not to.
“I love you too,” he says.
The words hit just as hard this time; maybe they always will.
I lean forward, and he meets me halfway, kissing me softly enough that my chest aches with it. There’s no heat in it at first, not the urgent kind anyway. Just morning breath and salt and the warm press of his mouth saying what neither of us knows how to say enough.
His hand slips to the back of my neck. Mine finds his waist under the sheet. We stay like that until Mila gives another sleepy grunt, and Eli breaks the kiss with a breath that sounds close to a laugh.
“She’s going to ruin the moment,” he murmurs against my mouth.
“She has excellent timing.”
“She has terrible timing.”
“She got that from Ryan.”
Eli snorts softly, then rests his forehead against mine. “Years, huh?”
I sigh because I know that tone. “Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m absolutely making it weird.” His thumb strokes along my neck. “You loved me when I had braces.”
“Unfortunately.”
“You loved me when I thought cargo shorts were acceptable formal wear.”
“That almost cured me.”
“You loved me when I argued that rugby was just football with commitment issues.”
I pull back enough to glare at him. “You were wrong then, and you remain wrong now.”
His smile starts slow and sleepy and devastating. “You shoved me first.”
“You insulted my culture.”
“I was five.”
“You were loud.”
He laughs, and the sound fills the room so gently that for a second, I forget I ever cried. Then his expression softens again, and he brushes his fingers along my jaw.
“You stayed through a lot too,” he says.
“So did you.”
He shakes his head slightly, not letting me deflect that easily. “No, Jules. I mean it. Even when I was an asshole. Even when I pushed you away because of Celeste. Even when you were dealing with your own shit, and I didn’t see it. You stayed.”
I swallow hard. “Sometimes I stayed badly.”
“Yeah,” he says, because he isn’t going to lie to make either of us feel cleaner. “Sometimes I loved you badly too. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t love.”
The sentence settles between us with a strange, painful grace.
I think about all the years we hurt each other by omission.
All the words we swallowed. All the assumptions we let harden because saying the truth felt too risky.
Maybe it would be easy to grieve that time forever.
Maybe part of me will. But Eli is here now, hand on my face, daughter in the cot, morning light on his bare shoulder, and I don’t want to spend the first morning after losing myself in everything we didn’t know how to do sooner.
“I don’t want to waste today being sad about the years,” I say.
His gaze holds mine. “Then don’t.”
“That easy?”
“No,” he says, kissing me once. “But we can be emotionally fucked up after breakfast.”
I laugh into his mouth. “Romantic.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You stole that from me.”
“I’m keeping it.”
Mila decides then that she’s done being patient with the emotional breakthroughs happening around her and lets out a tiny, offended sound that is not quite a cry yet but definitely the opening argument.
Eli’s head turns immediately, father mode engaging so fast it would be funny if it weren’t beautiful. He looks back at me, then down at the sheet pooled around his waist, then at the cot, then at me again.
“Your emotional breakdown has been postponed by a tiny tyrant,” he says.
I wipe the last dampness from my face and nod solemnly. “She’s a ruthless household manager.”
“She gets that from Killian.”
Eli moves to get up, but before he can, I catch his wrist gently. He turns back, brows lifting.
“I’m okay,” I tell him, because I want him to hear it while he’s fully awake this time. “They were good tears. Overwhelmed tears, maybe. Slightly embarrassing tears. But good.”
He studies me for a second longer, then leans down and kisses my forehead in a move so tender and unexpected it makes my eyes threaten me all over again.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “But next time lead with that before I wake up ready to fight God.”
“I’ll make a note.”
“Use one of your emotionally unavailable notebooks.”
I smile as he climbs out of bed and crosses to Mila’s cot, bare feet quiet on the floor, shoulders warm in the morning light.
He bends over her with that soft, automatic murmur he uses only for her, and Mila’s almost-cry turns into a gurgle the second he lifts her.
The sight opens the ache in me again, but this time I let it sit there without drowning in it.
Fifteen years ago, he argued with me over a rugby ball.
This morning, he stands in front of me with our whole impossible future tucked against his chest, messy and fragile and real.
And for once, I don’t have to pretend wanting that future is enough from a distance.
It’s here.
He’s here.
I’m allowed to reach for it.