And the scariest part was that I was starting to think I’d let her.
5
JULIET
After the afternoon at the marina, everything shifted between us.
It wasn’t obvious to anyone else, and it wasn’t anything you could put your finger on. But I felt it every time Bastian looked at me and then forced himself to look away, like he was fighting some invisible battle inside himself. That was when I knew for sure.
He wanted me, too.
The realization probably should have scared me. A smarter woman might have backed off the second she realized her feelings weren’t one-sided. But instead, I found myself leaning into the tension, not because I wanted to play games but because I was tired of pretending. I was done acting like I didn’t see what was happening between us.
So, I stopped ignoring it.
At the nightly bonfires, I started sitting right next to him instead of across from him. When we talked, I let my hand linger on his arm a little too long. I stopped calling him Uncle Bastian completely and started using just his name. That one seemed to hit him the hardest. Every single time I said “Bastian”,something in his face would tighten, like the word physically affected him.
But I realized the direct eye contact got to him even more. He could barely hold my gaze for more than a few seconds before looking away, but I kept doing it anyway.
I liked watching that small crack form in his control. Everyone else in the family saw him as this big, intimidating, apathetic man. But I had spent my whole life noticing the quieter things no one else bothered to see: the way he always showed up when someone needed help, how he fixed things without being asked, and the way he watched over all of us while pretending he didn’t care.
Especially me. That was what made this whole thing so dangerous. Bastian had always been my safe place long before he became the man I couldn’t stop thinking about late at night.
I couldn’t even pinpoint when I started seeing him differently. But somewhere along the way, everything changed.
Late that evening, after most everyone had gone to bed and the last flame in the fire had burned down to glowing embers, I slipped down to the dock looking for some quiet.
I loved the lake house, not just because it was my childhood safe place but because there were moments like this where I could find silence only feet from the back door and listen to the water lapping against the shore.
The summer air was still warm against my skin, and the lake sloshed softly beneath the old wooden planks. In the distance, thunder rumbled low across the sky, though the storm still stirred far away.
I wasn’t surprised to find Bastian sitting near the end of the dock by himself. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, a beer bottle dangling from one hand while moonlight shimmered across the dark water. Even from behind, he lookedtense, like he carried too much weight inside himself to ever fully relax.
For a second, I thought about turning around and leaving him alone. Then the dock creaked under my foot. Bastian glanced over his shoulder, and the moment he saw it was me, his jaw flexed.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked softly as I walked closer, trying to play it off like I wasn’t about to run back to the house.
“Something like that.”
I sat down beside him, close enough that our shoulders nearly brushed. The warmth of his body cut through the night air. “You always sit out here when a storm’s coming,” I said quietly.
His eyes flicked toward me. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything about you.”
The words settled heavily between us. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The lake stretched out dark and endless while a warm breeze swirled around us.
“I used to wait for you every summer when I was little,” I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. “I’d wonder if you were going to show up. And one day, your truck would just pull into the driveway, and everything around me just... calmed.”
Bastian swallowed hard, staring out at the water. “Juliet…”
“No, it’s true.” I smiled even though my chest ached. “You’d disappear for months, then eventually it became years, and I’d get so confused about where you were and what kept pulling you away. But then suddenly, you’d come back, and I felt safer when you were here.”
His throat worked as he swallowed again. “You shouldn’t look at me like that,” he muttered, refusing to look at me.
“Like what?”
“Like you want things to be different.”
