Page 26 of Beautiful When He Breaks

His voice comes low and firm. “No, you didn’t.”

I lift my head. “You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t have to be.”

The certainty in that should soothe me. Instead, it makes something inside me crack wider.

“She kept saying I’m not crazy,” I mutter. “That uncertainty is normal. That shame makes people second-guess themselves. That men get sexually assaulted too.” I stop and look at him, hating how small my voice sounds.

“Part of me keeps thinking maybe I’m twisting it. Maybe I should’ve known. Maybe I did know and just didn’t want to admit it because then I’d have to…” I shake my head once, angry at myself. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to make sense of something awful by making it worse.”

“Eli,” he says, but I don’t look at him. “You are not making it worse by calling it what it might be.”

I let out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh, except there’s no humor in it. “Yeah, well, it feels dramatic as shit.”

His voice hardens. “Then your feelings are wrong on that one.”

That startles a glance out of me. He’s watching me with his jaw tight, and for a moment, all I can think is that something definitely happened to him tonight. Something bad enough that it’s sitting under his skin while he stands here making room for my mess anyway.

I open my mouth to ask about it, but the words get crowded out by everything else inside me.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

His eyebrows pull together at once. “For what?”

Another laugh escapes me, rough and disbelieving. “For all of it,” I say, and my voice gets uglier with every word. “For pushing you away and not listening when you tried to warn me about her., and letting everything between us get so fucking weird that I didn’t even know how to look at you half the time.”

He lets out a stuttered breath. “Eli—”

“No, please listen.” I drag both hands through my hair and let them fall. “I missed you, Jules. I missed you so bad, and I still didn’t know how to talk to you because every time I thought about it, I just felt guilty and defensive and stupid.”

I swallow and keep going before I can lose my nerve. “I kept thinking I’d wait for the right moment to fix things. Then there never was one, or there was, and I screwed it up. Or I chickened out. I don’t know.”

His eyes lift to mine. “You don’t have to make this one of your apology projects just because everything else is burning,” he says.

“I know that,” I say. “I’m saying it because it’s true.”

He studies me for a long second. Then his gaze drops to the bassinet and softens at the sight of the baby sleeping there. When he looks back at me, there’s something tired in him that makes me want to ask what happened after practice and refuse to let him dodge me this time.

I shake my head, more frustrated with myself than with him. “I feel so fucking stupid.”

Julian’s whole face changes at that. “You’re not stupid,” he says.

“I ignored so much.”

“That doesn’t make you stupid.”

“It sure as hell doesn’t make me smart.”

He pushes off the desk and comes a step closer. “It makes you someone who got manipulated. Stop blaming yourself for not spotting every red flag while you were with her.”

I swallow hard. “You make that sound easy.”

He looks at me with that same unreadable, careful expression from earlier, and I’m hit with the full weight of everything still unsaid between us. All the old history. All the ways I’ve leaned on him without understanding what it might cost him.

I don’t know what to do with that tonight. Maybe he doesn’t either.

So, I reach for the only truth I can carry cleanly. “I really did miss you, Jules.”