He looked at me for a long, painful moment, his eyes full of love and torment and that constant weight he carried.
“I don’t know how to do this without hurting everyone,” he said finally, his voice rough.
The silence after that felt suffocating.
I waited for him to say something else—anything that would make this feel less impossible. Instead, he reached out and pulled me back down against his chest, wrapping his arms around me so tightly it almost hurt.
“I’m trying, Juliet,” he whispered into my hair. “I’m so fucking scared of what this is going to cost you… but I don’t think I can let you go, either.”
We stayed like that for a long time, tangled up together in the shadows, neither of us knowing what came next. The fear was still sitting heavy between us, but so was the love. Messy, complicated, and terrifying.
For now, that had to be enough.
But deep down, I knew the clock was ticking. We couldn’t keep living in this in-between forever.
Sooner or later, something was going to give.
10
JULIET
Everything exploded the next evening near the marina.
Bastian had been down there since late afternoon, finishing some repair work on one of the old fishing boats that my dad wanted ready for the weekend.
I told Dad I was going for a walk to clear my head after another tense dinner where everyone kept watching us too closely.
The truth was simpler: I missed Bastian. We'd only been apart for a few hours, but it already felt too long.
The sun had gone down, leaving the marina quiet and shadowed. I found him wiping grease off his hands near the storage sheds, his T-shirt clinging to his chest from the humid evening air. The second he saw me, that familiar heat flared in his eyes.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, but he was already reaching for me.
“I know,” I murmured, stepping into his arms. “I just… I needed to see you.”
We lasted maybe thirty seconds pretending we could be normal. Then he pulled me behind one of the old sheds, out ofsight from the main dock, and kissed me like he’d been starving for me all day.
His hands slid under my shirt, rough and possessive, palming my breasts as he backed me against the weathered wood. I moaned softly into his mouth, arching into him, my fingers digging into his shoulders.
The kiss turned filthy fast, our tongues sliding, teeth nipping, and his hips grinding against mine so I could feel how hard he already was.
“Fuck, I can’t get enough of you,” he growled against my neck, sucking hard enough to leave another mark. One of his hands slipped down the front of my shorts, fingers finding me soaked. “This pussy is always ready for me, isn’t it?”
I whimpered and rocked against his hand, losing myself in him, when I heard footsteps on the gravel. Then my dad’s voice cut through the night like a gunshot.
“What the fuck is this?”
I stared at my father, who stood frozen, his eyes wide with shock that quickly turned into pure rage. My aunt and uncle were right behind him, their shock just as tangible.
They’d seen everything, and the silence afterward lasted a moment before all hell broke loose.
My dad lost it completely. He called Bastian every name in the book, ones that had me flinching, others that made anger rise inside me as my protective instincts kicked in for the man I loved.
The old stories came flying out about Bastian, fistfights, arrests, and the way he’d disappear for years abandoning his family. Bastian took every word, standing in front of me like a shield, then quietly said it was all his fault and that he’d leave tonight.
He turned and walked away. I stood, shocked, dumbfounded that our family could treat Bastian that way.
So I followed him.
