Page 120 of Beautiful When He Breaks

“You didn’t choose it.”

His fingers tighten.

“I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

The laptop sits closed on the coffee table.

The flash drive is still plugged in.

And Eli stays in my arms while the truth tears through him, not alone this time, never alone again if I have any say in it.

37

Eli

Julian takes me upstairs to his bedroom.

I don’t remember deciding that. I only remember his hand at the back of my neck, his voice low near my ear as he says, “Come with me, Liefling,” and then the stairs under my feet, the hallway, and the smell of his room when he opens the door.

Clean laundry, cedar soap, him.

He shuts the door behind us, and the second we’re alone, something in me stops pretending it knows how to stand.

Julian doesn’t say anything at first; he just pulls me onto the bed with him and gets me under the blanket like there is a procedure for this kind of devastation, and he somehow knows it by instinct. I end up on my side with my face pressed to his chest, his arms wrapped around me, one hand spread over the back of my head.

The room is dim, curtains half drawn against the late afternoon light. The house makes distant sounds beneath us, careful footsteps and low voices, the entire Sin Bin moving around my grief like it’s trying not to startle a wounded animal.

I hate that I’m the wounded animal.

I hate it more because it fits.

For a while, I don’t talk. I don’t cry properly either, not the way I did in Julian’s arms earlier, not the kind that tore out of me because the hurt was immediate. This is different. This is cold—a thing sinking slowly through layers I thought I’d already survived.

There’s tangible proof now—not suspicion or gaps. There’s no more maybe she did something, maybe I misunderstood, maybe I wanted something and hated myself after, maybe I should’ve known, maybe I should’ve stopped it.

Proof. Files. Chats. Lists. A video Julian had to close because he knew where it was going and wouldn’t let it keep happening in front of him, even months after the fact.

It was real and fucking planned. Celeste took something from me while smiling at me, then handed me my daughter through a legal letter like the whole thing was a mess she was tired of cleaning up.

And I love Mila.

I love my daughter more than anything—more than pride, more than sleep, more than the life I thought I was supposed to have. Mila is warm weight, tiny hands, furious little noises, duck socks, and the way my whole chest eases when she settles against me. She’s innocent, mine, and the best thing in my life in ways I didn’t know a person could be after four months.

And I am so fucking angry about how she came to be that it scares me. It has nowhere clean to go because I won’t aim it at Mila. The idea itself makes me sick. But I can’t separate her existence from the proof sitting downstairs, and I don’t know how to live with both truths inside me without one poisoning the other.

I’m happy I have her, but I’m horrified by how Celeste made that happen. I’m grateful and violated, in love and disgusted, father and victim, and none of those words know how to stand in the same room without clawing at each other.

Julian’s hand moves slowly over my hair. “You’re thinking too loud,” he says quietly.

I laugh bitterly into his shirt. “That’s a new one.”

“It’s not new. You’ve always done it.”

“Didn’t realize my trauma came with volume.”

His arms tighten around me. “Your trauma can fuck off. I meant you.”

I turn my face just enough that my cheek rests over his heartbeat. It’s steady under my ear, a strong, living rhythm that gives my body something else to count besides panic. “I don’t know how to feel,” I admit.