Page 83 of Beautiful When He Breaks

Blakely scowls and leaves just fast enough that the retreat is obvious to anyone with a brain. He turns and walks back toward the building with stiff, measured steps, and the second he’s ten feet away, my knees almost give out from the adrenaline drop.

Eli yanks free of Luca finally and crosses to me in three hard steps, taking my face in both of his hands. “Did he touch you?”

I shake my head. “I’m fine,” I say automatically.

Luca makes a harsh sound that could be a laugh if anything about this were funny. “Bullshit.”

Ryan still looks dazed. “Somebody needs to tell me what’s going on, like right now, because that was Coach Blakely, and either I completely hallucinated that or he just had Julian pinned against a wall.”

The silence after that is no longer survivable.

I feel it settle in me with a kind of exhausted certainty. This is the moment. I’m done pretending pieces of it can stay hidden without poisoning everything else. Ryan deserves the truth if he’s going to be dragged into this orbit. There’s no good reason left to keep pretending this is still my burden alone.

“Tonight,” I say, and three faces turn toward me fully. “I’ll tell you all tonight.”

Eli’s expression shifts, anger bending around worry. “Jules, you don’t have to—”

“Yeah,” I cut in quietly, looking at him first because that matters. “I do.”

Ryan looks even more confused now, which would almost be funny if the rest of us weren’t standing in the blast radius of my life. He glances toward the direction Blakely disappeared, then back at me, and I watch understanding begin to gather in horrible, uneven pieces.

I can’t answer him here. Not in the open, and my whole body is still humming from the confrontation. So I just grip my bag a little tighter and nod once toward the gym.

Ryan drags both hands over his face. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” Killian says, finally starting toward the gym. “Get used to that feeling.”

We fall into motion because what else are we supposed to do in the moment after a threat leaves? The gym doors are only twenty yards away. The whole campus keeps moving as if nothing happened, and the normalcy of it all feels obscene.

I keep my eyes forward and walk anyway.

Tonight, I’m going to tell them everything.

26

Eli

The house feels too small for what’s about to be said.

That’s my first real thought as I sit down beside Julian on the big sectional and try not to look too worried. Mila is upstairs with Mrs. Alvarez, who took one look at the mood in the room and said she could stay late without anyone even asking. Her kids are grown, she’s divorced, and she’s seen enough life to read a room in one blink.

I’ve never loved her more than I did when she took Mila from my arms, kissed her little duck-covered forehead, and told me, “Go handle your people, mijo. I’ve got this one.”

Now the white noise machine is probably humming in my room, Mila’s probably asleep, and downstairs the whole Sin Bin is gathered.

Luca is standing near the fireplace with Sage tucked into his side, one hand resting low on Sage’s back in that absent, grounding way he always touches him now. Killian is leaning against the bar with a glass of water in his hand, watching everyone.

Julian is on my right, close enough that our knees keep brushing whenever either of us shifts, but he’s sitting too still for that to mean anything comforting yet. His composed face worries me because I know him better than I realized, and that stillness means he’s holding himself together by force.

Across from us, the others have settled in varying states of confusion and unease. Thorn is in the armchair by the window, sucker in his mouth and forearms braced on his knees.

Adrian is at the far end of the couch, his ankle crossed over his knee, trying and failing to look relaxed. Liam is sunk deep into the corner loveseat with Nate perched on his lap, one arm around his waist.

Roman is sprawled on the opposite couch, one hand absently playing with Damon’s fingers. Damon sits close beside him, finally back after finishing commissions. Even though he doesn’t know every piece of this house the way the rest of us do, he knows enough to understand when something serious is happening.

Ryan is standing because sitting would apparently require a level of patience God forgot to give him. He’s near the coffee table, arms folded hard across his chest.

Everyone who matters is here.