“Of course. She is a lot like you. A sweet spitfire who knows her worth. She calls me Unkie Julie.”
He chuckled, the vibrations stirring across my skin.
“Was she happy? Safe?” I asked sadly. My heart throbbed in agony, each second of silence weighing me further down. Compressing all of my anxieties into a singular stamp. I knew practicallynothingof my own child. I had never even searched for her.
Shouldn’t I have instinctively known she was alive? How could I let Julian shoulder this weight alone? How could I let Sparrow live without her mother?
“She was as happy as she could be. She knew you were coming, that you and Jayce were out there. And I kept her safe.” Julian’s voice cracked. “But not any longer. I miss her. She was my family. I was with her every step of the way, holding her whenshe cried the very first time. When she babbled and walked. When she learned the word ‘no.’”
Raw. In this moment, all of our sorrow and grief were laid bare. Julian was suffering in more ways than I expected. I never thought how close he must have grown to my daughter.
“Tell me your favorite memories?” I needed to hear it. To live vicariously through him. To understand what it meant to be a parent, because I didn’t have any idea, but I suspected Julian knew.
“Of course.”
Nestling closer together, he filled me in on the missing pieces of my daughter’s life. On her first words, her first steps, on every piece. On her favorite foods, her quirks.
We stayed like that for hours, well past the time we should be asleep. I listened to him draw a picture for me of my daughter. And I could only hope that one day I would be able to make my own memories. That Sparrow would forgive me.
Eventually he moved on to his journey, how he became the Host, every step he had to take. To keep me safe. To keep her safe.
But never himself.
I don’t think he meant to, but every word Julian spoke twisted an electric prod in my belly, a shocking heat that unfurled painfully as I realized for the first time.
Julian has always been in love with me.
It was in the way every single part of him was devoted to me. For me. Because of me.
And that was the thought that cycled through me as I fell asleep in his arms.
“Mmmmm,” I moaned, heat wrapping me up in its warm embrace. A cocoon of tenderness and comfort.
A naked man above me pressed me into the bed. Each piece of skin he touched alight in desire and need. He was everything I wanted. He was all that I needed.
Staring up, I recognized him.
“Julian!” I gasped.
My eyes shot open, landing on obsidian.
The port hole in the room allowed just enough moonlight to slip through it for me to see them.
“Raven?” Julian’s voice was soft as he reached out, brushing my hair back from my sweat soaked skin. “What is it? You started tossing and turning and then—”
Surging forward, my lips met his. There was a single moment of surprise, but then Julian’s hand tangled into my hair, the other tugging me to him, guiding me to roll onto him. Our lips never separated.
We were one. A harmonious beat that continued past the point of comfort. Until it was too loud. Too much. Too raw.
An orchestra without a conductor.
There was passion. Need. Anger.
I wasangryat him. For sacrificingeverythingfor me.
Attempting to show him as much, I pushed myself into him. Forcing him to swallow me whole, to take what I had, to handle me.
And he did. His hands found my hips, the rough pads of his fingers skirting up and under the shirt onto my sensitive skin there.
