Page 7 of Beautiful When He Breaks

I don’t call him out on it.

I just lean into him enough for our shoulders to touch, my daughter held safely between my arms, and for the first time since Celeste disappeared, since Jules and I fell apart, I let myself reach for him.

He reaches back without me having to ask.

3

Julian

I get Eli upstairs because I need him somewhere quieter before the whole damn house crushes him with concern. That’s the excuse I use, anyway. The truth is that I need him away from all those eyes before my own control cracks and someone sees it.

The baby is tucked against Eli’s chest as we climb the stairs, one tiny fist hooked in the front of his shirt as if she already knows he belongs to her now. He moves like the stairs are unfamiliar territory, his blue eyes fixed downward, his face pale.

I know him well enough to see the panic he’s trying to swallow. Most people would miss it because Eli’s always been good at looking solid. He’s built for it—broad shoulders, muscle, that easy all-American kind of face people trust on sight. Dark hair, blue eyes, and a football tan that makes him look healthy even when he’s not.

People look at him and see a clean-cut, dependable man from a good family, with a good heart. The kind of guy who smiles at old ladies in church and carries too many grocery bags in one trip because he doesn’t want anyone else to have to do it.

I look at him now, and I see a man trying so hard not to break apart in front of everyone that he’s holding himself together with sheer force and not much else.

“Keep your arm under her head,” I tell him quietly, staying one step below and slightly behind him in case his knees give out. “You’re doing fine.”

He gives a stiff nod but doesn’t look at me.

Fine. The word tastes bitter even in my own mouth. Nothing about this is fine. There’s a newborn in his arms, a lawyer’s letter downstairs, a girl who disappeared after making his life hell, and an ugly, black suspicion sitting in the middle of all of it with its hands folded neatly in its lap. I can feel it there. I know Eli can too. Neither of us wants to look straight at it because once we do, the whole room changes shape.

When we reach the upstairs hall, the noise from downstairs fades into a muted, anxious rumble. Eli stops outside his bedroom door, staring at the handle. I reach around him and open it, careful not to brush too close because he’s wound so tight I’m scared even that will snap something.

His room is exactly what I remember from before the silence between us got too thick. Neat but not obsessive. Football gear tucked against one wall. A Bible on his nightstand, its spine worn from use, not performance. A stack of sports psychology textbooks. A half-empty bottle of water, a hoodie tossed across his chair, and his bed unmade because he never learns, no matter how much he pretends he’s more put together than the rest of us.

The sight of that stupid unmade bed almost breaks me. Because I know this room. I know where he keeps extra socks. I know which drawer has protein bars and which one has the old letters his mom wrote him during his freshman year because she cried every time she called and didn’t want him to hear it.

I know Eli Matthews in ways I’ve spent months trying to bury because loving your best friend while he chooses someone who hurts him is a special kind of self-inflicted hell.

“Here,” I murmur, stepping close enough to take the baby. “Let me.”

His arms tighten around her for half a second, then his eyes flick up to mine, panicked and apologetic all at once. “I’m scared I’m gonna drop her.”

“You won’t,” I say, holding his gaze. “But I’ve got her.”

He nods and lets me slide my hands beneath the baby’s small body. She’s warm and limp with sleep, her tiny head settling into my palm, and my chest squeezes so hard I almost curse out loud. I’ve held babies before. Jess was basically glued to me for half my childhood. Cousins. Neighbors’ kids. Family friends who thought that because I was tall and broad, I’d be useless, until their babies shut up the second I took them.

But this isn’t just a baby. This is Eli’s.

Maybe. Fuck. The word alone makes me want to punch something.

I carry her to the bed and lay her down in the center, far from the edge, gently rolling one of Eli’s clean hoodies and setting it near her side—not touching her, not crowding her, just enough to make the space feel less wide.

“We’re not leaving her here unattended,” I say, because I can hear my father’s voice in my head. “This is just for a second—no pillows near her face, and no loose shit around her.”

Eli stands near the door, arms empty now, fingers flexing at his sides, staring at the bed with that same stunned look. But now that the baby isn’t in his arms anymore, and the adrenaline that kept him upright downstairs is slipping.

I can see it happening in real time. The set of his shoulders changes, and the tension in his jaw gets worse instead of better.

I open my mouth to ask what’s wrong, though that’s a stupid fucking question because obviously everything is wrong. But before I get the first word out, his face crumples.

He doesn’t make a sound at first; that’s what gets me. If he shouted, if he cursed, if he punched the wall, I’d know what to do with that. I know anger. I know fury. I know how to brace for it, take the hit, and steer it somewhere safer. But Eli just folds in on himself in absolute silence, his mouth pulling tight as tears spill helplessly down his face. It’s like watching a dam crack open under the pressure it can’t carry anymore.

“Eli,” I say, and I’m already moving before his name finishes leaving my mouth.