I couldn’t form words.
I couldn’t think.
Not when she was looking at me like that, scaring the fucking shit out of me.
She searched for something in my regard. She might have physically been there with me, but emotionally, mentally, she was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere deep inside herself. A place she visited often. And without words, she was confessing all her broken parts to me.
All her deepest wounds.
All her oldest scars.
Sharing her sadness and despair, and above all else, the damage it left behind.
Down to the bottomless depths of her soul, there was pain.
“Isla…” I muttered, my voice laced thick with uncertainty and concern.
My mind battled my heart, raging a war I never had a chance tosurvive. It was her loneliness that ate me alive, swallowing me whole, and that was when it clicked, that was when I understood…
We were one and the same.
It was why we pushed people away.
It wasn’t about her not wanting to speak to anyone. It was her trying to hide from everyone.
She was the first to break our trancelike state.
She turned, finally ready to leave without hearing my response. The Uber drove us back to the house.
Home.
Neither of us spoke. I jumped in the shower and then lay there in my room, staring at the ceiling. I knew she was in my brother’s bed. I could hear and feel her through the wall that separated us. Needing to make something right between us, I was suddenly sitting at my piano, playing the first song she ever heard us play at the subway station that evening, where we first met.
Knowing deep in my heart…
This song meant everything to her.
And I could give her that.
Even if it was only for tonight.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
JULIUS
The drivefrom the Bronx hotel to the club was quick. People went there to party, and it was the only reason I was there. I was already in a shit mood when I hopped off my bike and made my way up to the entrance.
I lived under the same roof with two of the closest people to me, and I had to keep secrets to protect them. Playing this double life was taking a toll on me. I was losing my mind, and they had no clue.
As I approached the entry, the air crackled with cosmic energy, and the bouncer eyed me up and down. From my boots to my collared shirt to my leather jacket, his stare stayed intently focused on me.
I cocked my head to the side, informing, “I was invited. I’m Julius Knightly.”
“By who?”
“Your boss.”
