Page 72 of Two Sides of Sin

“Julian?”

Her voice was a soft, trembling whisper that nearly brought me to my knees.

Slowly, warily, I turned around.

Sage was still backed against the wooden crates, her eyes wide. But she wasn’t looking at me with the terror the contractor had shown. She was staring at me with a profound, breathless shock, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

“Are you hurt?” I asked. The words came out harsher than I intended, rough and clipped, a desperate attempt to keep the trembling out of my voice. I kept my distance, refusing to step into the halo of the halogen light with her.

“No,” she breathed, shaking her head. She swallowed hard, her hand coming up to rest defensively against her collarbone, right where the phantom ache of my gaze always seemed to land. “No, he didn’t… he didn’t touch me.”

“He was out of line.” I stared at the floor between us, focusing intensely on a chip in the marble. If I looked into her blue eyes for too long, I was going to lose my mind. “You shouldn’t be working in this sector alone after dark. It isn’t safe.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be alone,” she said softly, taking a single, tentative step towards me. “The rest of the team went to get dinner. I just stayed behind to finish a sealant layer. I hadn’t realised he had locked the main doors.”

Locked the doors. A fresh wave of murderous rage crashed over me, making my vision edge in red. If I hadn’t come through the cloisters… if Noah had sent someone else…

She took another step. The scent of her—that intoxicating and heartbreaking mix—washed over me, consuming me, tearing down the walls I had spent the last three days building.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice dropping to a register so intimately familiar, it felt like a knife twisting in my gut. “For stepping in. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did,” the words slipped out before I could stop them. Raw. Real.

Sage stopped, her breath hitching. She tilted her head, studying my face with those impossibly observant ocean eyes. The wariness from a few days ago was gone, replaced by a magnetic, dangerous curiosity.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” she asked, the question striking the air like a match.

Chapter 47

Sage

The question hung in the dusty air, vibrating over the low hum of the generator.

Why have you been avoiding me?

For a brief moment, I thought I saw something fracture in his face. A raw, gaping wound of an expression that made me want to investigate further. His jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might shatter, and those terrifyingly beautiful eyes flickered with a pain so deep it felt invasive just to witness it.

But then, as quickly as it appeared, the fracture sealed shut.

I watched, fascinated and unnerved, as the man who had just protected me locked himself away behind an impenetrable, icy vault. The shift was physical. His broad shoulders squared, his spine straightened into rigid military perfection, and the yearning in his eyes frosted over into dead, blank professionalism.

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” he said. His voice was flat and devoid of the raw edge it had carried just a moment ago. “My patrol sectors are dictated by the command tent, ma’am. Not personal preference.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, a sudden spark of frustration igniting in my blood. “Ma’am? Seriously? You practically sprinted out of this chapel three days ago, and Noah has been running every single interior sweep since.”

“Noah is better suited for civilian interaction,” Julian clipped out, his gaze firmly fixed on a point just over my left shoulder. He refused to look me in the eye. “I am not.”

“You interacted with that contractor just fine,” I pointed out, my voice rising slightly. I wasn’t backing down. There was something buried under this guy’s armour, and for some insane reason, I desperately wanted to know what it was.

“That was a security threat,” he replied instantly, his tone dropping to a chilling, authoritative zero. “My job is to neutralise threats and secure the perimeter. That is the extent of my purpose here. I don’t do small talk, and I don’t fraternise with the NGO staff.”

Ouch. The dismissal was so sharp and cleanly delivered it physically stung. He was drawing a massive, uncrossable line in the sand between us.

“I wasn’t asking for small talk,” I said quietly, the adrenaline from the near-assault finally beginning to crash, leaving me feeling exposed and tired. “I was just trying to understand why you treat me like I’ve done something personally wrong to you.”

A muscle feathered along his jawline. For a painfully long moment, he didn’t speak. The silence was so heavy it felt like it was crushing the oxygen out of the room. He looked like a statue carved out of obsidian, standing just outside the ring of the halogen lights.

Finally, he reached up and pressed a button on the radio strapped to his chest.