Page 276 of Secret Heir For The Billionaire Twin

Julian stops a few feet away.

“I thought he should be here.”

Theo moves beside me and slips his hand into mine. That is when my heartbeat really starts to climb. I look down at him as he is smiling. I look back at Julian.

“You two are making me nervous.”

Julian’s mouth curves faintly.

“That was not the intention.”

“It’s definitely the result.”

He steps closer. The confidence is still there, but I can see the tension beneath it now. It is in the way he takes one slow breath before looking directly at me.

“Sophie.”

Something in his voice makes my chest tighten. I look at Theo again. He squeezes my hand. Then Julian reaches into the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket.

I stop breathing entirely.

“Julian…”

He lowers himself onto one knee and my free hand flies to my mouth.

Julian opens the ring box.

The diamond catches the candlelight immediately, elegant and unmistakably substantial without needing anything else around it. My vision blurs before I can take in more than the shape of it.

“Oh my God,” I whisper.

Tears spill over almost at once.

Julian looks up at me from one knee, and for all the confidence he carries into every room, there is nothing guarded in his face now.

“Sophie,” he says, “I spent most of my life believing success meant having control over everything around me. The company, the decisions, the outcome, the next move. I knew how to build things. I knew how to protect them. I knew how to make sure nothing could surprise me.”

I laugh softly through the tears because that sounds exactly like him.

Julian’s mouth shifts, but his eyes stay on mine.

“Then you came into my life and reminded me that the best things I have were never things I could control. They were things I had to choose.”

My hand stays pressed over my mouth.

He continues,

“Theo has become one of the greatest joys of my life, and I will never stop being grateful for the boy you raised. You protected him, loved him, gave him stability, and built a life around him when I wasn’t there to help you do any of it. I can’t change the years I missed, but I can spend every year ahead of us showing both of you that I’m here.”

The tears come harder. Theo squeezes my hand, but I cannot look away from Julian.

“You are stubborn,” Julian says, and a small smile finally touches his face.

“You are brilliant, difficult, protective, loving, and still completely unimpressed by my name when it suits you.”

A wet laugh escapes me.

Julian continues, “You challenge me more than anyone I have ever known, and somehow you are still the place where my life feels the most complete.”