Page 49 of Beautiful When He Breaks

One brow lifts. “I’m already pissed. That’s not exactly a barrier.”

Under any other circumstances, I’d laugh. Tonight, I just look at him and realize there’s no gentler door into this, so I stop trying to build one.

“I’ve been seeing someone.”

Luca blinks once. “That’s not the bad part.”

“No,” I say. “The bad part is who.”

I drag one hand through my hair and force myself to start at the beginning because if I jump to the end too fast, it’ll sound like a lie.

“It started months ago, before shit got really ugly with Eli. I was pissed at him, and jealous, and being stupid, and this thing with… with this person started because I was angry and wanted something that didn’t mean anything. That’s what I told myself, anyway.”

Luca’s face goes carefully blank in the way it does when he’s listening hard. “Who?”

I shake my head. “Let me finish.”

His jaw tightens, but he nods.

“It was a rush at first; that’s the most disgusting part. I liked the secrecy. I liked being wanted by someone older who knew exactly how to get under my skin. I liked not having to be the nice one, or the loyal one, or the guy waiting around for Eli to notice me while he was too busy playing house with a girl who treated him like shit. It felt easy in the beginning. Dirty, but easy. I told myself I was choosing it. That it was just sex. That I wasn’t the pathetic idiot in love with his best friend if I had somewhere else to put all of that.”

“Julian—”

“I know,” I snap, and then immediately regret the edge in it. I scrub both hands over my face and start pacing because standing still is impossible now. “I know it was stupid and selfish. I knew it then, too, not all the way, but enough. I just didn’t care because it felt good not to be the only one miserable for five fucking minutes.”

The room is too quiet. Luca’s just watching me with that rigid, focused intensity that tells me the anger is coming but hasn’t picked a target yet.

“So then what changed?” he asks.

I laugh and stop pacing long enough to look at him. “He got possessive first. Not all at once. Little shit. Questions about where I was. Why I didn’t answer quickly enough. Who I was with. Why I smelled like a party. Why I left something on read. It started out sounding flattering if you were dumb enough, which apparently I was. Then it got controlling. Telling me where to meet him. Telling me what I should and shouldn’t wear when I came over because he liked me better one way than another. Acting like I owed him for his time and attention, for the fact that he’d chosen me in the first place.”

Luca’s mouth goes flat. “Did he threaten you?”

I look at the floor for a second. “Not at first.”

He doesn’t let that pass. “Jules.”

“Yes,” I say, sitting down on his bed. “Yes, okay? He threatened me. Not always directly, sometimes it was just implication. Reputation. Team shit. Making it clear how bad it would look if somebody got the wrong idea. Making it clear I had way more to lose publicly while he had way more power privately.” My throat tightens. “And then it got physical.”

I can see the exact second Luca understands what I’m actually saying, because the air in the room changes. He sits forward, forearms on his thighs now, hands clasped so hard the tendons stand out. “What kind of physical?”

I almost lie to minimize it. Rough sex. Bad fights. Boundaries crossed. Something vague enough to let both of us pretend. The problem is I’ve come this far, and Luca knows me too well for me to get away with that. So, I force the truth out between my teeth.

“The kind that leaves bruises.” My voice sounds strange even to me. “The kind where ‘no’ stops meaning shit if he’s angry enough. The kind where I started checking my neck in mirrors before coming downstairs and making up stories for why my ribs hurt if anybody noticed I moved wrong. The kind where I started planning my days around not setting him off and answering the phone even when I didn’t want to because ignoring him just meant I’d pay for it later.”

He stands so fast the bed frame creaks. He turns away from me and plants both hands on the dresser, head bowed, shoulders rigid as steel cables. When he speaks again, his voice is lower. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“Because when a person with authority decides to make you feel chosen and trapped in the same breath, it scrambles your understanding of what counts as consent after a while,” I say. “I didn’t want to make it real. I didn’t want anyone looking at me like I’m weak or dirty or stupid. In the beginning, I wanted it, or thought I did, and after that, it got harder to tell where the line moved. He has power, and I knew how insane it would sound. I kept thinking I could end it myself if I just timed it right.”

Luca turns back around, and I look up again. He’s furious, and not performatively. Not in a flash of temper that’ll burn hot and die. This is colder than that—a fury that locks into a person’s bones and waits for direction. “Who is it?”

There’s the last locked door, and it’s the ugliest one, because once I say it, there’s no putting the secret back into a shape that feels abstract. No more some older guy. No more somebody in authority. Just the dirty truth.

He must see that hesitation because he says, “Don’t protect him.”

I have to force myself to hold his gaze when I say, “It’s Coach Blakely.”

Luca doesn’t move or blink. The name drops and just sits there, ugly and impossible, and suddenly very real between us.