Page 52 of Holy Hearts
I should have never kissed you. Not when I couldn’t follow through.
Julian laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Right. A mistake.” He leans in, his face inches from mine, his gaze piercing through me. “Funny how that mistake still lingers, isn’t it?”
I look down, my fingers tracing circles on the bar, unsure if I’m ready to give voice to the storm inside me.
I can feel his eyes on me, unwavering, and the confession I’ve kept locked away for years slips out.
“I don’t regret it, in case you’re wondering. I never said I regretted it.”
Julian’s breath catches, but he doesn’t reply right away. He looks away, his fingers clenching around his glass. When he speaks, his voice is tight, raw.
“I never asked, but since we’re confessing our sins… I do. I regret it. I regret thinking that kiss meant something. That maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t the only one feeling it.”
I feel my throat tighten as his words sink in, each one hitting harder than the last. “Julian, I?—”
He cuts me off, his gaze sharp, angry. “You don’t get to explain it away now. You kissed me, and then you ran. And I don’t know what’s worse—that you kissed me at all, or that you acted like it was nothing.”
Hearing it out loud from him—how much I hurt him, how much I dismissed something that was real—felt like being gutted. But what hurt more was knowing that for years, I let fear dictate my life. I told myself I was doing the right thing, that I was protecting both of us, but all I was doing was running from a truth that refused to be buried.
His voice dips lower, rougher. “You made me feel like a fool for thinking it meant something. And yeah, maybe I should’ve been smarter than that. But I wasn’t,” he finishes, his voice cracking.
For the first time tonight, he doesn’t look at me. And somehow, that hurts more than if he’d yelled.
Memories of that kiss crash through my mind suddenly, and I feel like I’m drowning. I remember the way the kiss was hesitant at first, like he was afraid I’d pull away. I was the one who initiated it, after all. But I didn’t pull away.Couldn’t.I let it happen. And I can still so clearly remember what he looked like right after the kiss—flushed, out of breath, eyes dark with something I wasn’t ready to name.
He looked at me like I was something holy.
And that terrified me.
Because I didn’t want to be worshiped. I wanted to beconsumed.
The difference between him and me, though, was that I never let myself believe I could want him. I couldn’t want him.
Not back then.
The pain in his voice is more than I can handle, and I feel myself unraveling, the walls I’ve built around this crumbling fast. “I left because I didn’t know how to handle it… how tohandleus. And I couldn’t give you what you wanted. Not at the time, anyway.”
For a moment, his expression softens, a flicker of the man I used to know. But then he shakes his head, a bitter smile tugging at his lips.
“I think you handled it just fine, Kai. You walked out, moved on, left me to pick up the pieces.” He leans back, putting distance between us that feels colder than I expected. “So don’t pretend you’re here now looking for closure. We’re a little past that, don’t you think?”
My chest feels tight, and I don’t know if it’s the whiskey or the sheer weight of everything I left unsaid. “I thought I was protecting you by leaving.”
He exhales sharply, his face caught somewhere between anger and sadness. “Maybe next time, Kai, let me decide what I can and can’t handle.” He stands up, his gaze lingering on me for a second too long. “Was it all just anexperiment?”
“What? No. It just… happened. I can’t explain it, okay? I don’t regret it, but…”
Julian huffs a cruel laugh, and then his lip curls away from his teeth. “Well, congratulations. You seem to be doing fine. Happy to be your test subject. Have a good night.”
He walks away, and his shoulders are stiff with anger. As I watch him walk out of the bar, something inside of me snaps.
The way he saidexperiment…
I can’t help but think of the blond head bobbing on my cock just a couple of hours ago, and the way I rutted into his mouth as if he were someone else.
Not just anyone, either.
One specific blond.
