Kraven’s face snapped back. I was over to them in one stride, grabbing Julius’s collar as he continued to beat on Kraven. Delivering a blow to his stomach, then his ribs.
“Julius, please stop this!” I shouted.
Kraven locked his legs around him, flipping Julius over, spewing, “Fuck you! You left! You fucking left her! You fucking left me!”
“And that gives you the right to fuck what’s mine!”
Kraven hit him in the face, taunting, “She’s mine now!”
“Oh my God!” I cried. “That’s enough! Both of you!”
Kraven hovered above him, panting until Julius reacted. Punching him back. They were like this for a minute as I cried out for them to stop. This wasn’t going to fix anything. It wasn’t solving shit.
It was making everything worse.
“How could you do this to me?” Julius shoved him away. “After everything I’ve done for you!”
Kraven stood. “For fuck’s sake, Julius! You left! What part of that do you not understand?”
With one foot in front of the other, Julius abruptly got into his face. “You’re my fucking brother, Kraven!”
Inhaling deeply, it was my turn to snap, loud and clear. “Who the hell do you think you are, Julius?!” I stepped between them, glaring at him.
“You did leave! Let’s not forget that!”
Vindictively, he replied, “Yeah… and it didn’t take you long to find comfort in my brother’s arms, did it?”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair, sweetheart.”
“News flash,” I reminded him. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t left me.”
“You don’t think I know that! You don’t think I have to live with this! Do you think it’s been easy for me to leave you? That I haven’t been thinking about you every moment of every day…? I left because I couldn’t stay. It was all too much, Isla. But how about you ask me why I came back?” he finally confessed. “I came back because I can’t live without you. You mean everything to me. You’re mine. Nomatter what, you always will be. All I’ve wanted to do is protect you and keep you safe. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to make you turn to my brother, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life. Do you have any idea how hard it is to know that? How hard that is to accept?”
My lips trembled. It was on the tip of my tongue.
“What do you want me to say?” He coaxed. “What do you need to hear, Isla? You want to know the truth. I’ll tell you the truth…” Without thinking twice about it, he spoke with conviction, “I love you. I’ve always loved you, and I won’t ever stop. Do you understand me? I’m in love with you! That’s why I came back…”
Tears brimmed my eyes. My heart ached, pouring out for all to see.
His expression suddenly turned heated as he called out, “Are you really going to stand there, though, and pretend you two haven’t been?—”
“Yeah, Julius,” I interrupted. “And you were gone all those times too.”
“I was working, Isla, like I’ve been for the past month and a half. I wasn’t fucking around on you.”
Kraven abruptly intervened, “She didn’t cheat on you, Julius, so stop acting like she did. You weren’t together. You haven’t been together. She’s not yours… You just think she is…”
Realizing he didn’t know the truth, Julius broke his illusion into a million pieces, enjoying every last second of it as he brutally ripped the rug out from under him before I could chime in.
Crudely, he lit the flame. “I was her first, Kraven. She became mine the night before I left, you fuck.”
My heart exploded.
What did I do? How do I fix it? Where do we go from here?
Kraven jerked back, glancing over at me with an expression I couldn’t read. “Is that true?”
