Page 128 of Beautiful When He Breaks

Julian strokes himself, matching the rhythm I’m still trying to keep, and the sight of him touching himself while I’m inside him nearly sends me over the edge, and I have to stop moving.

I feel myself getting close before I want to be.

“Jules,” I whimper. “I’m close.”

“I know, baby.” He fucks into his fist faster, and his other hand pulls me down until my mouth is near his. “Keep going. I wanna feel you.”

I kiss him messily, losing rhythm for a second, then finding it again when he guides my hip. The pressure builds until it’s everywhere—my spine, my stomach, my throat. Julian’s body tightens under mine, and the sound he makes tells me he’s close too. I want that. I want it so badly my mouth runs ahead of my brain again.

“Come for me,” I say against his mouth, rough and desperate. “Please, Jules. I need to feel you lose it.”

Julian’s whole body goes taut, and the look on his face in that second is something I’ll remember forever—shock, pleasure, love, surrender. Then he comes with my name in his mouth, his hand working himself through it, body clenching around me so hard that I follow him.

My orgasm hits like falling through the floor, tearing a sound out of me that I bury in his shoulder as my hips jerk. He holds me through it; even like this, even shaking and breathless from his own release, he holds me.

I’m trembling. Sweat cooling on my back. Face pressed to his neck. Still inside him, still surrounded by him, still trying to understand how the world can be the same one that held the flash drive downstairs and this bed at the same time.

Julian slides his hand through my hair. “You okay?” he whispers.

A laugh breaks out of me, hoarse and almost teary. “I’m more than okay.”

“You’re beautiful when you break for me,” he says, kissing the side of my head. “So fucking beautiful.”

I lift my head to look at him. He looks wrecked. Beautiful. Soft in the aftermath, curls everywhere, mouth swollen, eyes shining in the low light.

Mine.

I lean my forehead against his and smile. I made love to my best friend. I know not many people can say the same thing, and that makes it even more special.

This wasn’t something taken, recorded, and twisted into a weapon. This was messy and human and imperfect and safe. This was Julian guiding me through fear without making me feel small for having it. This was me choosing, asking, touching, learning, losing my mind and still remaining inside my own body.

For the first time since the flash drive, I close my eyes without seeing that black piece of plastic in my palm.

I feel Julian’s heartbeat instead.

39

Julian

Morning has a way of making everything look gentler than it actually is.

The curtains in Eli’s room are still half closed, but pale light is already threading through the gaps, turning the walls a soft gray-blue and catching on the edges of the dresser. We came here after… everything last night because Mila’s cot is here and we needed her close to us.

She’s still asleep, one tiny fist tucked beside her cheek, her mouth parted in that serious little way she has when she’s deep under. Every so often she makes a small noise, not quite a sigh, not quite a dream sound, and my whole body still reacts to it even though she isn’t mine by blood, and I never expected fatherhood-adjacent instincts to sneak up on me in the dark and rearrange my internal wiring.

Eli is asleep beside me. He’s on his stomach, one arm shoved under the pillow, dark hair wrecked from sleep, my hands, and from everything we let ourselves become last night. The sheet is pulled up low across his back, leaving the line of one shoulder bare, warm skin marked only by pressure from the pillow and the faint red scrape of my stubble near his neck where I kissed him too many times because I could.

He looks younger like this, but older too. Younger because sleep takes the sharp edges out of him, the defensive line of his mouth, and the way he’s had to learn too quickly how to stand between the world and his daughter. Older because I know what’s behind that sleep now. I know what proof sits downstairs and what Mara called it. I know the weight of what he chose last night, not because he wanted to erase the ugliness, but because he wanted one memory of his body that belonged only to him.

And to me.

The thought makes my throat close so hard I have to turn my face into the pillow for a second.

Mine.

Not in the crude sense, not in the way that takes. I’ve had enough of that word twisted in the mouths of men who think possession means permission.

I mean mine the way home is mine when I walk through the door and stop holding my breath. Mine the way a promise is mine once someone makes it and means it. Mine the way Eli looked at me last night, terrified and brave, and so fucking honest it split me open, and he still said yes because he trusted me to hear the word as a gift instead of a debt.