Chapter 44 - Julian
To me, it has all been real. That’s the cruellest part of it, I think.
That’s the thing that keeps circling back, no matter how I try to outrun it. No matter how many times I replay the last six months, no matter how carefully I examine every decision, every pause, every silence.
It wasn’t a performance.
It wasn’t an obligation.
It wasn’t convenient.
It wasn't a list to check off, from an agreement we both signed.
It was... is real.
It was the most real and honest my life had ever been, and I wouldn't change a thing.
Not even the moment everything fractured, because sometimes you have to break open to see the truth. And every single second before that moment mattered.
The mornings were always my favourite.
Lucy never woke the way I did. She didn’t snap awake, already braced for impact. She surfaced slowly, like the world allowed her grace instead of demanding readiness. Her lashes would flutter first, then her brow would crease faintly, like she was negotiating with the day.
I learned to wait.
The first sip of coffee always changed her. Her shoulders would loosen, breath easing out of her, eyes warming from brown into something deeper, molten, alive. She never noticed me watching. Or maybe she did and pretended not to.
That look, that moment, became something I measured my mornings against.
She’d pad around the penthouse barefoot, hair loose or messily pinned, wrapped in one of my shirts like it belonged to her. Like I belonged to her. She hummed when she was focused. Quiet, off-key, unaware. Sometimes she leaned into me without looking, trusting I’d be there.
And I was, always.
I didn’t realize when the shift happened. Only that one day, I stopped thinking of the penthouse as a place and started thinking of it as where she was.
I lived to watch all the little things that were Lucy.
I learned a lot of things without realizing I was learning them.
The way she tucked her feet under herself on the couch when she was deep in thought.
The way her laugh, unrestrained, real, did something to me I didn’t have language for.
I’ve closed billion-dollar deals with less certainty than I felt about her.
Paris only confirmed it.
I’d been there countless times before.
With Lucy, it felt like a different city.
She wanted to walk everywhere. Wanted to stop and look and taste and linger. She dragged me into bakeries because of the smell, into bookstores because of the feeling, onto quiet bridges just to stand and watch the river move.
She looked at the world like it was still capable of surprising her.
I watched her watch it, feeling like she was sharing her magic with me in these moments.
That night, when the city pressed in around us, she pressed into me just as easily. Like closeness wasn’t something she had to negotiate. Like my arms were where she wanted to be.
We didn’t talk about the contract.
We didn’t need to.
Everything about us felt… chosen.
On the drive home from the airport, she was curled into my side, half-asleep. I buried my face in her hair and breathed her in, and a heavy and unfamiliar feeling settled deep.
I thought it was gratitude. And maybe that was part of it.
I murmured it without thinking.
“Thank you for saying yes,” I said quietly. “Thank you for letting me live my life by your side.”
She shifted slightly and sighed into my jacket... and then she said it. “I love you, Julian.”
The words swallowed me whole, pulling me under.
Not because I didn’t believe her.
Not because I didn’t feel it.
But because something in me… froze.
My body reacted before my mind did. Muscles locking. Breath catching. A sharp, disorienting sense of being exposed in a way I had never experienced before.
Love was not something that had ever been spoken to me.
Not as a declaration.
Not as something I was allowed to hold.
I didn’t know what to do with it.
So, I did what I’ve always done when something threatens to dismantle me.
I pulled away.
I told myself I needed perspective. Space. Control.
I convinced myself distance was responsible.
I convinced myself wrong.
Theo knew it before I did.
We fought about it two days later, voices sharp, tempers shorter than usual.
“When was the last time you were home with her?” he demanded.
“That’s none of your business,” I snapped.
“The hell it isn’t,” he shot back. “You’re disappearing, Julian. And she’s not stupid.”
"You don't know what you are talking about," I snarled.
He gave me a once-over, a look of disgust that I had only ever seen him wield at our father, "You think you are so much better than everyone else, better than him. But you are playing right into his hand, Julian. He's turning you into him, and you are letting him."
I told him to mind his own life.
He told me I was about to ruin the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I didn’t speak to him for a week.
Work became refuge, then an excuse and then a weapon.
The acquisition was massive, high-stakes, and politically delicate. My father’s company had brought the deal to me. It was supposed to be seamless.
It wasn’t.
The woman Richard had introduced to me months ago apparently worked for him now, and Simone was assigned as liaison from my father’s side. He promised she was brilliant and persistent. I found her to be inappropriate in ways that felt deliberate.
I corrected her repeatedly. Drew boundaries immediately.
My first interaction with her was the day Lucy tried to bring me lunch, and I screwed up brutally.
Simone had shown up dressed for a club and not a business meeting.
She was supposed to come to the meeting prepared to break down what the company would look for in the acquisition negotiations. She came unprepared and set me off.
When I close my eyes, I still can see the look in Lucy's eyes when she dropped the bag of, what I discovered to be, my favourite foods. She waited just long enough for our eyes to lock, for me to see exactly what I had done, what I was doing and walked away without saying a word.
I had to leave right after. I stood staring at her sleep, recognizing the moments her body started to wake her up. I knew the minute she was aware I was watching her.
I wanted to climb back into bed with her. Say hell no to the acquisition. I wanted to bare myself to her and tell her I had no idea what I was doing, but the idea of not having her in my life was terrifying.
But I was a coward who had always let work lead and had never been taught or shown what a healthy relationship looked like.
So, I watched tears fall down Lucy's cheeks, and I walked away.
I convinced myself it was what I needed to do to get through this business deal, with focus and clarity, and then I could focus on Lucy.
Like you could just hit pause on a marriage and expect to resume when you're ready.
I felt physically sick as I boarded the flight. But I am a stubborn man, so I swallowed the nausea with scotch and focused on work.
Simone continued to parade herself around me, and my patience continued to fray.
One night, when she leaned too far over my desk, I gave her my jacket without thinking, not as a gesture of intimacy, but to shut the moment down, to cover the girl up.
I wanted it done.
I wanted to go home.
I told myself I needed to understand what Lucy had awakened in me before I faced her with it.
That logic cost me everything.
It wasn’t until the first week away that it hit me.
The realization came quietly, without drama.
I had never, not once, heard the words 'I love you' spoken to me before Lucy whispered them into existence.
Not from my parents.
Not from lovers.
Not from anyone.
The idea of love had always been transactional and conditional.
Lucy had given it freely.
And I had run.
The moment I understood it; panic gave way to clarity.
I loved her.
There was no question anymore.
I had Claire reach out immediately about booking time away. If I could get Lucy alone, if I could explain... if I could show her I understood now...
Then Claire forwarded Lucy’s response.
A cold, detached response that was nothing like my Lucy. She referenced the fucking agreement.
Something in me snapped, shattered.
I trashed the hotel room.
I don’t remember throwing the lamp. Or shattering the glass. I just remember standing there afterward, hands shaking, heart pounding like I was twenty years old and completely out of control.
Claire tore into me afterward.
“You are losing her,” she said bluntly. “And you’re letting it happen.”
Rowan’s updates were worse.
“I don’t know what you’ve done,” he told me. “But something’s wrong. It’s like her light is dimmed.”
I tried to call her, but every time, something intervened. Simone. My father. Another meeting that couldn’t wait.
The one time I did get through, I handled it badly. Took my frustration out on her. Heard her voice tighten and didn’t stop myself. Then I was pulled into a pointless meeting and had to end the call.
I told myself I’d fix it in person.
I just had to finish this deal.
But time wasn't on my side, and the days kept on blurring into weeks.
I felt like everything was unravelling around me. I just wanted to close the deal and go home to Lucy. I wanted to see her with my own eyes, explain to her that I know I fucked up. Try to get her to see that I was so out of my depth in this relationship...
But nothing was going to plan. Nothing was working.
After another extremely long day, in a string of long days, I silenced my phone, locked myself in my room and crashed.
I woke up to my hotel phone ringing off the hook.
I sat up, realizing that I had fallen asleep in my clothes from the day before, and I hadn't even taken my shoes off. The phone started ringing again, and that's when I caught my first look at my phone and all the missed notifications.
Calls, voicemails, and messages. From Rowan, Claire, Caleb and Theo.
I jumped up, grabbed my phone, and called Rowan back, unease blooming bright.
“Julian,” he said, voice low. “Where the fuck have you been? You need to come home.”
“Why?” I demanded. “What happened?”
There was a pause.
And then... “Your father went after Lucy. She left Julian; she's gone.”
The world tilted.
Everything that mattered snapped into terrifying focus.
And I finally understood that burying myself in work hadn’t protected her.
I had abandoned her and left her vulnerable.