12. June
June
The weeks have bled into a long, miserable blur, and the silence from my applications started to feel like an impending eulogy.
Every afternoon, the walk to the mailbox feels like a march off a plank.
Day after day, I check the slot with a heart that sits like a lead weight in my stomach, only to find the same mocking emptiness or the colourful, useless clutter of junk mail and pizza coupons.
I was stupid to think I could get out. Maybe the world is finally screaming what I’ve been trying to whisper to myself: that I don’t belong in the city.
I’m not meant for the light of an art school studio.
I’m meant for the shadows of this town, for the dust of this house, and for the two men who seem to be the only ones who know I exist.
If it weren’t for Julian, I think I’d simply dissolve into the floorboards.
He’s become my anchor, my borrowed oxygen.
The second he leaves a room, the walls start to lean in, echoing with the hollow silence Annie left behind.
He fills the gaps in my life with a quiet, steady presence that I’ve come to rely on more than I care to admit—a comfort that is starting to feel dangerously like a necessity.
“Ready to go, June?”
Julian appeared on the porch, looking impossibly bright and alive. The sunlight caught the honeyed depths of his eyes, turning them into something molten. He’d decided we were going to the beach today, claiming I needed fresh air before I “turned into a vampire.”
The weather was a small blessing. The sky was a perfect, taunting blue, as if the universe were laughing at my grief. By the time Julian had spread the blanket across the sand, the sun beat down, heavy and golden, and for the first time in months, I felt lighter in the chest.
I reached back and pulled my sundress over my head, exposing the black bikini beneath.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the sudden stillness of Julian’s frame.
He didn’t make a single sound, but he looked like a man who had just forgotten how to breathe.
He’d never seen me like this—so much skin, so little to hide behind—and the intensity of his dark, unblinking stare made my skin prickle.
As he looked at me, a shameful heat flared in my chest. I thought of the nights I’d spent in the hollow dark of my bedroom, lying in bed and tracing the shape of my own skin, imagining it was his hand.
I’d spend those hours envisioning the hot slide of his tongue in my mouth and lower, in places that made my breath stutter until my own fingers were a poor, frantic substitute for the man I wasn’t supposed to want.
I’d never admit it to him, never let him see the wreck he had made of me, but the hunger was there, clawing at my insides.
“Turn around,” he commanded. It wasn’t a request. His voice had dropped an octave, rough as the sand beneath us. He gripped the sunscreen bottle like it was the only thing keeping him from reaching out and grabbing me.
I turned my back to him, gathering the heavy silk of my dark hair over one shoulder. I expected the usual clinical application, the way he handled me like a delicate, wilting flower. But when his fingers reached the tie of my bikini top, the knot gave way.
I gasped, slamming the fabric against my chest with both hands to keep from being exposed to the open beach, but my entire back was now bared to him.
“Julian?” My chest tightened, refusing to release a breath.
He began to knead the lotion into my skin, his palms broad and heavy, tracing the contour of my spine with a tormenting slowness.
His touch was gentle, yet it carried an underlying note of restraint.
When his fingers began to creep around my sides, sliding toward the sensitive, electric skin under my arms, a surge of heat flared in my belly.
It was a need I couldn’t hide, a physical pull toward him that made my head light.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered. His breath was a warm vibration against the nape of my neck, sending a fresh wave of shivers down my spine.
I couldn’t speak. I just nodded, my chin dipping toward my chest. I felt his fingers move to the final string tied behind my neck—the only thing left holding the world together.
He undid it slowly, as if he were savouring the tension.
I let my hands drop, the fabric falling into the sand, leaving me exposed to the sun and the raw, hungry intensity of his gaze.
I let him explore. His touch was sensitive, almost tickling, but it felt so incredibly right that I found myself leaning back into the solid wall of his chest. When his fingers found me, rolling the peaks of my breasts between his thumb and forefinger, a low, broken moan escaped my throat.
“Does it feel good, June?” he murmured, his voice a dark caress.
I nodded again, my eyes fluttering shut as I pressed my bare back against his solid, naked skin.
He continued to massage me with a firm grip that made my knees weak, while his other hand reached around to tilt my head back.
Leaning over, he devoured my mouth, his tongue seeking mine like a man who had been starved of oxygen for a lifetime.
It was our first kiss, and it was everything I had imagined and more. The heat, the taste of him, and that torturous, heavy demand that told me he was struggling just as much as I was.
The weight of the moment shifted with a sudden, playful growl. Julian broke the kiss, grabbed me around the waist, and hoisted me over his shoulder as if I weighed nothing at all.
“Julian! Put me down!” I shrieked, laughing harder than I had in months. The sound felt foreign in my own ears—carefree and happy.
He sprinted towards the shoreline, sand kicking up behind him, and plunged us both into the surf.
The cold water was a sensory shock, but as we surfaced, I was still clinging to him.
My legs instinctively wrapped around his waist, my arms locking around his neck to keep from being swept away by the current.
I was smiling so wide it hurt. It was a genuine, bubbling joy—a miracle in the wake of Annie’s passing.
We drifted out to where the water reached his chest, the waves bobbing us in a synchronised, hypnotic dance.
I looked into his eyes, seeing the reflection of the sun and something much deeper, much darker.
In the cradle of the ocean, the playfulness ebbed away into something heavy and dangerous.
Our lips met again, but the laughter was gone.
This was a deep, thorough exploration. My hands tangled in his wet hair as I pressed myself closer, the friction of the water making every sensation feel amplified.
I found myself grinding against him under the surface—a desperate, instinctive motion I couldn’t control. Julian response terrified and thrilled me. He hooked a hand under my leg and pulled me down to straddle him.
He wanted me. I could feel it in the way his breath faltered against my skin, in the bruising grip he had on my shoulders. There was no denying it—not with the hard weight of his cock stabbing into me, pressing relentlessly against my thigh with absolutely no attempt to hide it.
But then, the heat vanished as if a curtain had been dropped.
Julian’s hands moved from my waist to my shoulders, and he pushed me away. It wasn’t violent, but it was a firm, clear, cold breaking of contact.
“We should go,” he said. His voice was suddenly clipped, clinical, and distant. He looked towards the shore, his eyes avoiding mine as if I had suddenly become something he couldn’t bear to see. “It’s getting late.”
I stood there, the water swirling around my hips, feeling a sudden, biting chill despite the sun. “Julian? Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” he muttered, already heading back towards the beach without a second glance. “The sun’s going down. I don’t want Nana worrying.”
I watched his retreating back, my chest tightening with a gnawing confusion. One second he was devouring me, his body promising me everything I’d ever wanted, and the next, he was a stranger again. A flicker of something—fear? guilt?—had crossed his face, but I couldn’t pin it down.