He glanced over at Isla. She was crying now. It almost made him stay, but he didn’t.
He turned and walked out.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
ISLA
The door shut behind Julius,and the sound didn’t just echo, it lingered. Pressing itself into the walls, into my chest, into the space he had just occupied.
For a second, I genuinely thought the room tilted on its axis. The ground beneath me shifted in a way I couldn’t correct, couldn’t steady, couldn’t catch up to. It just kept going, with no end in sight.
I didn’t realize I was staring at the door until several minutes had passed. Until the silence stretched so far it started to hurt. Until I became aware of the fact that we may have lost him to this. Finding out the paternity of the baby may have been less severe than what just occurred in this hospital room.
“He’s not okay,” I announced, wiping away my tears.
Kraven didn’t answer right away, and that alone told me everything I needed to know. He always had something to say when it came to his brother. Now he just stood there, watching the same door I was.
“No,” he agreed, “he’s not.”
“Are you okay?”
I swallowed, my fingers tightening slightly against the edge of the hospital bed. I tried to ground myself in something physical because everything else felt like it was slipping away, too fast, too far, and I feared I’d never be able to get it back.
“I’m not the one whose life has been ripped apart.”
“You pushed him,” I said.
“I told him the truth.”
“You didn’t just tell him the truth,” I countered. “You forced him to face something he wasn’t ready for.”
“He was never going to be ready for it, Isla.”
“That doesn’t mean you had to shove it in his face like that.”
“And what… you think letting him lose his shit would have been the better choice?”
“Yes,” I simply stated. “For five minutes maybe? Yeah, I do.”
“It wouldn’t have been five minutes. Trust me, the only reason he didn’t lose his shit was because of you and not wanting to cause you stress. It doesn’t mean it’s not coming, though.”
Silence fell again, but this time, it wasn’t empty. It was fully charged and rearing its ugly head.
“You still love him?”
I blinked, caught off guard by the question. “Of course I do. What kind of question is that?”
“The kind that matters right now.”
My chest tightened. I knew what he was implying, even if he wasn’t saying it outright. Kraven didn’t look away. He didn’t soften. He didn’t give me anything to hold on to.
What I felt for Julius wasn’t the same as what I felt for Kraven, and what I felt for Kraven wasn’t something I could explain without hurting Julius in the process. I was tied to both of them, and in the aftermath of everything we had just learned, our lives shifted again, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with any of it.
“He’s breaking, Kraven.” I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen it in his eyes before he walked out. “You saw it too, I know you did.”
He nodded.
