“You asked why I never reported him. What if I had? What if I actually did, and I became Katie’s guardian, and then it was up to me to make sure she knew that someone loved her, and was going to protect her? And what if I couldn’t do that?”
His words threatened to rip something out of my chest. Something sharp and painful, pressing against my lungs.
“What if I’m broken, because of them?” Julian said. “What if I don’t know how to love people right? What if I can’t?”
“You are not broken.” Fury burned in my gut. Not at Julian, but at the world for making him feel this way. And at myself. “You love people better than anyone I’ve ever met. Don’t you dare let anyone make you think that.”
“Then why am I not enough? Why is what I do, and who I am, never fucking enough?”
I pulled Julian in again, sobs rolling through his body as I held him. I didn’t know what to say, and all the soft, gentle words in the world wouldn’t make a difference if Julian really felt that way about himself.
He was the best person I knew. The most forgiving, the most loving, the most kind. It killed me that he didn’t realize that.
I told him. Told him how good he was, how loved he was—carefully using the passive voice. Told him he was enough. I wasn’t sure if it made any difference. But it was all I could do.
Slowly, Julian’s shoulders stopped shaking. His breath grew more even. His grip on the front of my shirt loosened.
I thought about asking him if he was okay. If there was anything I could do. But every time I opened my mouth to ask, it seemed stupid. Of course he wasn’t okay.
So I waited for him to speak. Waited, and waited, until I realized that sometime during all that waiting, he’d fallen asleep.
Which presented me with a dilemma that after a moment’s thought, turned out to be no dilemma at all. Shifting again, I settled into the corner of the couch and tipped my head back against the cushions. Julian stirred, but didn’t wake.
There was so much I couldn’t fix, but this, at least, I could do. I let my arms fall to Julian’s waist and closed my eyes. Sleep came quickly.
18
Julian
I woke up with my head in Connor’s lap.
It should have been uncomfortable. I mean, my ear was getting smashed by his belt buckle and my neck was bent at an angle that defied physics and yet I felt…good?
Safe. I felt safe.
I blinked, shifting as I tried to remember how I’d ended up in this position, and then freezing as the past twenty-four hours flooded back into my brain.
Regionals. Katie. My dad. And then Connor.
How did he always seem to come over when I needed him most? Did I project a bat signal of desperation that he was specially attuned to? Did I give off radio waves?
It was so strange to think that yesterday morning, I’d been convinced I’d never see him again, and tried to tell myself that was a good thing. And now—well, now my mouth was suspiciously close to areas I thought it would never go near again either.
I didn’t deserve him. The way he’d talked to me. Comforted me. Put all of our shit aside and just held me. I didn’t know what to make of it.
Well, no. That wasn’t strictly true. The way he kept trying to change the subject, when I brought up our fight. The way he brushed off my attempts at an apology. There was an obvious conclusion to draw—it just wasn’t one I liked.
‘Maybe if you and I hadn’t fought,’ Connor had said. Like the fight had brought him clarity. He’d said before that maybe we were never meant to work, and if that was what he’d decided, I had to respect that.
He’d calmed me down last night like I was a child. Told me everything was going to be okay. Told me I was loved—and just as clearly, hadn’t told me that he loved me.
It wasn’t fair for me to be hurt by that, not after everything he’d done for me.
It was time to grow up. Connor had. He wanted out of the endless loop we were stuck in. I didn’t need him to spell it out for me. I just had to let him go.