Chapter Thirty-Three Scars
HADLEY
The Vegas sun hasn't quite breached the heavy curtains yet, leaving the hotel suite washed in a quiet, slate-gray shadow. I wake up slowly, the transition from sleep to consciousness wrapped in a profound, heavy warmth.
I’m on my back. Julian is lying next to me on his stomach. His large arm is draped over my chest.
For a long time, I just lay there and gaze up at his sleeping face, turned toward me, admiring just how gorgeous he is. Last night was…amazing. The way he touched me with such care…the way he used his tongue between my legs…
The way he filled me so perfectly, I felt like a piece of me I didn’t know was missing settled into place. He was tender and patient, but I never doubted that he wanted me every moment.
Careful not to wake him, I slide my palm flat against his bare side, then up his flank, tracing the heavy, solid contours of his back.
He feels like marble and hot iron. His skin is covered in a collage of tattoos centered around a roaring grizzly bear.
I didn’t know he had anything like this, and I can’t help but wonder if the tattoo came before or after he basically became the personification of a bear himself.
I let my fingers wander along the pattern without much thought, just enjoying the texture of his skin.
Then, the pads of my fingers catch on something uneven.
It doesn't match.
I pause. The skin beneath my fingertips feels raised, jagged, and slicker than the smooth muscle surrounding it. I trace it downward. It’s a thin, jagged line a few inches long near his ribs. I move my hand higher toward his shoulder blade, and my fingers find another.
Then another.
Some are small and uneven. Some feel old and deeply set, while others aren't quite as faded. Near the center of his back, my thumb brushes over a distinct, circular mark that feels slightly puckered. Almost like…a burn.
My chest tightens, a sudden, cold weight dropping into my stomach. These aren't hockey scars. They’re not from the tattoos…the lines don’t line up. I know what skate cuts and puck lacerations look like. My dad has plenty of them. Those are clean, surgical, or precisely stitched. These are chaotic.
Violent.
A heavy sob catches in my throat, my vision blurring with a hot rush of tears as the horrific reality settles into my bones. My fingertips hover just millimeters above his skin, trembling so violently I can barely hold them steady.
Who could have done this to him? Who could have looked at this boy, this sweet, protective, amazing man, and hurt him like this?
An overwhelming wave of fierce protectiveness crashes over me.
I don’t see the intimidating, untouchable hockey player the rest of the world sees.
I just see Julian. The man who holds me like I’m made of glass, and who makes me feel safer than I ever have in my entire life.
He has so much goodness in him, so much quiet tenderness hidden beneath all those sharp edges, and the thought of someone intentionally tearing into his skin makes me physically sick.
Oh, my sweet Julian. Who did this to you??
Julian shifts beneath my touch. A low, gravelly rumble forms in his chest, and his grip on my waist tightens before his eyes flutter open.
The deep chocolate of his gaze is heavy with sleep, but the moment my fingers trace over the puckered mark again, I watch a sudden, sharp lucidity take over his expression.
“Julian,” I whisper. I choose my words carefully. “What are these?”
He lies completely still for three long heartbeats. I can hear the clock ticking on the nightstand. I brace myself, expecting silence.
Instead, he sucks in a deep breath and meets my gaze.
“My father,” he rasps, his voice a low, hollow sound that cuts right through me.
The breath catches in my throat. I don't speak. I don’t want to interrupt him and make him stop. He takes a moment, seeming to choose his next words carefully.
“My mom tried to be there for me, I suppose,” he whispers, his jaw tightening as he turns to stare at the ceiling. “But she was too broken, and she left. Saved herself and left me and my brother behind.”
“You have a brother?” How did I not know that? It’s only hitting me now how little I actually know about Julian before he joined the Night Hawks.
“Had.” The word comes out clipped.
I press my palm flat against his chest, feeling the sharp, ragged rise and fall of his chest. “What happened to him?”
“Leo packed a duffel bag the day he turned eighteen,” he explains through gritted teeth. “Looked at me in the hallway. Said he couldn't take it anymore, and walked out. I was fourteen. After he left, there was no one else to absorb the blows. I became the only target.”
Instead of breaking down, Julian’s entire body goes rigid. He pushes himself up, sitting completely upright against the headboard. His chest rises and falls in sharp, shallow breaths, his jaw clenched so tight that the muscles tic.
I shift closer, crawling up the mattress until I’m kneeling right beside his massive frame.
I press my chest against his side, stretching my arms around his broad shoulders.
I try to rest my chin on his shoulder to ground him.
He’s so impossibly tall that I can barely reach, my chin only making it to the solid crook of his collarbone.
“Dad was a drunk and a gambler," he continues.
“A mean one. When he drank, his rage was unpredictable.
He turned our house into a literal minefield.
If I dropped a glass, if I breathed too loud, if I stepped on the wrong floorboard at the wrong time…
it would trigger an explosion. I spent four years sleeping with one eye open, waiting for the door to burst off its hinges. It never felt safe. Not for a second."
He pauses, his throat bobbing hard as he swallows down the memory. When he speaks again, his voice fractures slightly before he thickens it, trying to force the emotion back down.
“Then Mrs. Clay found me,” he murmurs, his gaze finally drifting down to meet mine.
“She saw the bruises. Let me come to her house whenever I wanted, fed me, and did her best to keep him the hell away from me. She wanted me to live with her, but I knew that would put her in Dad’s crosshairs.
She couldn’t always protect me, but she tried, and that fucking counted for something. ”
He reaches up, his thumb brushing over my jawline with a tenderness that breaks my heart. “She means everything to me, Hads. She’s the only reason I’m not sitting in a cell or lying in a grave right now.”
He goes quiet, and his entire body is rigid with tension. I rub his arm and press a gentle kiss to his shoulder.
“Mrs. Clay sounds incredible,” I whisper. “I’m so glad she was there for you, and I’m so sorry that you suffered as you did. Is that why it’s difficult for you to open up to people?”
His eyes darken. “When you grow up like that...you learn real quick that you can only rely on what you can control. Your environment. Your routine. If everything is in its exact place, nothing can catch you off guard. You also learn that people leave. Eventually, the floorboards creak, the peace breaks, and they walk out.”
The more he talks, the harder it is for him to contain what's brewing inside him.
Rage. When the pressure under his skin becomes too much to handle in the quiet confines of the sheets, he flings the duvet off.
He gets out of bed in one fluid, powerful motion, standing tall in the center of the dimly lit room like a predator trying to contain the urge to tear something apart.
He doesn't pace. He just stands there, his back to me, the heavy muscles of his shoulders bunching and flexing as he stares into the dark, fighting down the old ghosts with everything he has left.
He’s only wearing his black boxers, his massive, imposing frame fully exposed to the dim light.
Across the broad expanse of his back, the chaotic lines of his scars are masked by that intricately inked tattoo.
He moves to the edge of the room in one fluid stride, grabbing the glass of water from the nightstand and draining it in a few long, rough swallows.
Then, he steps over to the wall-mounted thermostat.
His large fingers tap the button to lower the AC temperature by a single, precise degree.
As he stands there staring at the digital screen, my eyes drift past him, sweeping over the rest of the dark suite.
A quiet, heartbreaking realization settles into my chest. The room is immaculate.
The room service menus on the desk are stacked in a perfectly flush square.
The heavy ceramic coffee mugs by the espresso machine are aligned with their handles facing the exact same direction.
The curtains are pulled so tight there isn’t a single microscopic gap letting in the neon lights of the Strip.
When did he even do all of this?
I watch him from the bed, and in a single, breathtaking heartbeat, everything clicks into place.
The hyper-specific way he cooks. The constant, obsessive need to clean, fix, organize, and control every variable around him. It’s not just a quirk. It’s how he survives. How he keeps the chaos of his childhood from pulling him under.
I swing my legs out of bed, the cool air hitting my bare skin, and cross the space between us.
With every step I take toward his rigid, towering figure, a profound, agonizing ache swells inside my chest. He has spent his whole life being the strong one, the predator, the protector.
But right now, I want nothing more than to be his sanctuary, to absorb his rage and give him a safe place to finally drop his heavy armor.
To be the person he can talk to, to tell his secrets and worries to so he doesn’t have to hang onto them alone.
“Julian,” I murmur.