28. June
June
It’s been a few days since the silence of the woods was replaced by the silence of the manor, and I haven’t left Julian’s side for more than a heartbeat.
It’s a strange, dizzying whiplash—as if the months of icy rejection and the cold shoulder he gave me in the garden were just a bad dream I finally woke up from.
The wall between us was being pulverised, ground into the dirt along with the sack of shit Julian left in the peat bog.
But even as Julian pulls me closer, a new, sharper kind of terror is taking root in my chest. I thought we were finished for good.
I thought he’d finally thrown me away like trash, leaving me to rot in the mundane life of a small town diner waitress.
But now that he’s back in my life, now that his hands are back on my body, I find myself praying every single second that he never finds out about Cain and I.
I don’t trust Cain. I see him in the hallways, a dark shadow that never quite fades, and every time our eyes meet, I feel the weight of our secret crushing me.
He looks at me with a glint in his mismatched eyes—a silent, mocking reminder of the night he stood in my bedroom like a sleep paralysis demon.
He knows. He knows he holds the power now, and I swear he loves seeing me suffer, watching me squirm under the suffocating pressure of his gaze while Julian remains blissfully unaware.
But I’m grateful for Julian in a way that’s almost frightening, a devotion that borders on religious.
Every time I close my eyes, I see the moonlight glinting off Billy’s eyelashes, that split second of predatory intent, and then the sudden, violent spray of red.
I can’t imagine what would have happened if my shadow hadn’t been watching.
I haven’t gone back to the diner. I can’t bear to answer Cheryl’s or Cindy’s calls, to explain how Billy vanished into thin air, or why I’m never coming back to that world of pancakes and coffee.
Being “normal” was a beautiful dream that turned quickly into a visceral nightmare.
Now, I’m back in the gravity of the Blackburns. Reading in the garden while Julian’s gaze anchors me to the earth, being guarded like a precious, fragile prisoner who never wants to be paroled.
The air in Julian’s bedroom at the manor was thick, heavy with the scent of the cedar wood cologne that always seemed to cling to him.
Outside, the dark sky was weeping against the tall, arched windows of the estate, but inside the sanctuary of his four-poster bed, the world felt claustrophobically small.
Julian was lying over me, his broad shoulders blocking out the dim, shadowed architecture of the room, pinning me beneath his familiar, comforting weight.
I looked up at him, my fingers tangled in the heavy linen sheets, the ache in my chest finally breaking the silence we’d been hiding behind in these drafty halls.
"Why did you leave me, Julian?" I whispered, my voice straining in the dark.
His expression crumbled, the usual saintly armour he wore melting away into raw, bleeding torment.
He looked down at me, his chest rising and falling heavily against mine.
"I didn’t want to, June bug," he murmured, his voice a low rumble.
"God, I never wanted to. But I thought...
I thought I was doing the right thing. To keep you safe from the mess of my life. I'm so sorry."
A hot, unexpected tear slipped down my temple, and Julian instantly caught it, the pad of his thumb wiping the moisture away with a fierce tenderness.
"Every second I wasn't with you, you haunted me, June," he whispered, leaning down until his breath brushed my lips. "I couldn't escape the guilt of letting you go. I betrayed my own soul when I hurt you, and in doing so, I broke both our hearts. I'll never do it again. I'll never leave your side."
When his mouth met mine, the kiss was a desperate, passionate collision of grief and profound devotion. He held the side of my face, his fingers anchoring me as his lips traveled frantically over my jaw, my cheeks, my eyelids, covering me in a tender attack of apologies.
"You have no idea what you mean to me," he growled against my skin, his grip tightening. "And I'm so sorry for making you think anything else. You want me to prove how much you mean to me, June? What part of me belongs to you? I won't just tell you. I’m going to show you."
Before I could respond, he leaned over the edge of the bed. The sharp creak of the antique bedside drawer cutting through the quiet was followed by a chilling, metallic flick.
The silver gleam of a switchblade caught the moonlight above my head.
I gasped, my body seizing beneath him against the mattress. "Julian... what are you doing?"
He didn't say a word. His brown eyes locked onto mine as he pressed the tip of the blade directly into the hard muscle of his chest.
He drew the knife down.
I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat and echoing off the high bedroom ceiling as the sharp steel sliced through his skin. "Julian, stop! What are you doing?!"
He didn't flinch. His jaw gritted, his teeth baring as he methodically dragged the blade through his own flesh, carving the first letter of my name over his heart. A deep, crimson pool gathered quickly before heavy droplets broke away, dripping directly onto my bare chest.
The hot, wet sensation soaked into the sheets, staining the fabric around me.
I stared up at him, my eyes blown wide with horror and fascination, watching his blood paint my skin—and then, a sudden, dark sickness twisted in my stomach.
The sheer, taboo madness of his devotion, the sharp scent of his blood mixing with his cologne, sent a searing jolt of lust straight to my core. I was getting turned on.
Trapped in a spiral of inappropriate, primal arousal, my hands traveled down to his waistband.
I undid his belt, the buckle clinking in the dark, and frantically pulled his pants down.
He was already straining, thick and hard, and I wrapped my fingers around his length, stroking him in a desperate rhythm while his blood continued to rain down on me.
Julian let out a guttural grunt, a low, animalistic growl ripping from his throat as my slick palm moved against him.
The pleasure only made him more ruthless; he pushed the blade deeper into his chest, mutilating his own flesh with my brand, refusing to break eye contact.
Our stares burned into each other, a devouring, soul-stealing lock.
I wanted to look away from the carnage, but I was transfixed by the man he had become.
His muscles locked, his entire frame vibrating with need as he gritted his teeth to carve the last initial.
The friction of my hand grew faster, matching the frantic rhythm of his bleeding chest. Just as he finished the final cut, his body went rigid.
A low, moan tore from his lips as he came, the thick, hot fluid spraying across my hand and onto my stomach.
For a long, breathless minute, neither of us moved. We just lay there in the quiet room, our breathing shallow and desperate. Staring into each other's eyes whilst his blood and cum mixed on my skin.
Slowly, Julian rolled off me. He reached for the bedside table, grabbing a black ink pen.
With a savage grinding of his teeth, he bit the end off the plastic casing.
He leaned over his own ruined chest, taking a deep breath, and blew hard against the pen, spraying the dark, thick ink directly into the open, bleeding tracks of the wound.
He used his hand to rub the ink deep into the sliced flesh, mixing it with his own blood, creating a raw, permanent, home-job tattoo brand of my name.
When he crawled back over me, his chest was a horrific, beautiful mess of black and crimson. He reached down, grabbing my hand, and firmly pressed my finger directly into the weeping, fresh wound.
"You have no idea what you mean to me," he whispered, his voice a dark, wicked promise that destroyed whatever was left of my logic and reason.
The drive back towards Nana’s that afternoon was a blur. I leaned over and squeezed Julian’s arm, just wanting to feel the solid, steady weight of him beside me.
“Nana is going to be so happy you’re coming,” I said softly. “You know she loves you more than she loves me half the time, and she missed you, too.”
“I mean it, Julian,” I said. “Thank you, for always being there for us.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “You do more for me than you’ll ever know, June. You’re the only thing that keeps me from drifting off into the dark entirely.”
I felt light. Happy. But as we turned the final corner onto my street, that thought was extinguished.
Red and blue lights strobed against the wet pavement. An ambulance was parked haphazardly in our driveway, its back doors hanging open like a gaping, surgical wound.
“What the fuck?” I whispered, my hand already clawing for the door handle.
I was out of the car before he could reach for me, sprinting towards the lawn. Mrs. Gable, our neighbour, was standing by the hedge, her face crumpled into a mask of sobbing pity.
“Mrs. Gable! What’s going on? Where’s Nana?” I screamed.
She turned to me, her eyes red-rimmed. “Oh, June… I’m so sorry, honey. She never misses church, so I came over to check. I found her in the kitchen. She must have had a fall… we think she hit her head on the edge of the counter. The paramedics… they said it was instant.”
“No,” I gasped. “No, no, no.”
I pushed past her, running towards the ambulance. Through the gap in the doors, I saw it: the long, white, plastic shape of a body bag.
The world tilted on its axis. The ground seemed to collapse underneath me. I felt Julian’s strong arms wrap around me from behind, trying to anchor me, but I fought him with a feral, hysterical strength. I clawed at the air, my vision blurring with hot tears.
“Nana! No! Let me see her!” I shrieked.
The paramedics stepped in front of the doors, their expressions grim. “I’m so sorry, Miss. There was nothing we could do. It was a tragic accident.”
“I should have been home,” I wailed. While I was letting Julian mark me, while I was losing myself in the heat of his body… she was dying alone on the kitchen floor.
My legs gave out completely. Julian caught me, lowering us both to the wet grass.
I buried my face in my hands, the sobs racking my body until I couldn’t breathe.
I was covered in the scent of the man who had killed to keep me, while the woman who had lived to love me was being driven away in a bag.