“I trust you.” His words were his own contract, his own declaration of confidence in me. It was empowering, the feeling alone changing a beat in my heart. The gun, my first tangible awareness of the power Julian held, was like rigid silk in my hands. It was smooth, cold, and heavier than I imagined. I examined it, picturing Julian’s fingers wrapping around each curve before his formidable index finger condemned another soul.
“You can’t hurt me while I have this,” I told him, lifting the barrel toward his body, pressing it against the firm muscles of his chest. Julian remained calm, his eyes the only piece of him expressing any emotion or thought. They were glowing, wide with alertness or simply surprise, and captivating. I doubted he ever feared anything. Julian slowly nodded, his tongue poking between his lips to lick before his teeth clamped down on his bottom lip, tugging it inward while he waited for me to talk or kill him. I’ve wanted to do both for so long.
“I understand, babby.”
“First,” I noted, “I hate that nickname.”
“Babby?” His question led to laughter, a deceptively innocent sound that melted my resolve. “My mother called me that. It’s a term of endearment. It’s always been meant that way with you. I can’t stop. Why are we negotiating?”
“You have something I want, and I know you don’t give away things easily, without payment or someone’s life.” Julian refused to respond but for the twitching of his lips threatening a smile.
“You have answers,” I told him, wrapping the tip of my index finger around the trigger of Julian’s gun. “Give them to me.”
“Put it down,” he whispered, his eyes closing as he slowly took in a breath. “You’re not a killer. You won’t kill me.”
My index finger stroked the trigger while I nervously swallowed. “Tell me.”
“You don’t remember anything, do you?”
“Tell me,” I repeated, my voice filling the air with ice as Julian leaned forward, winding his long fingers around my forearms.
“Put down the gun, babby.” His eyes widened, pleading with me. “I’ll tell you everything. I give you my word.”
I debated, my eyes melting into his while Julian’s tongue probed through his lips, dampening his skin as he stared at me. I wondered how many times he had been held in that position, his life entirely in control of someone else’s.
“It must frighten you…not being in control of someone else’s life and having your own life hanging at the whim of someone else…of someone you’ve hurt. That must be a new feeling for you. I’m sorry you have to go through this. No, I’m not. You’ll tell me everything right now or I’ll pull the trigger…even if it is a bitch to clean you from these pretty floors, Julian Molloy.”
The corner of his mouth slowly lifted, twitching into a smirk that left my insides a puddle of mush. His eyes sparkled, the lines of his grin radiating like a damn sunrise while he looked at me from his downcast expression.
“I wish you could see yourself right now, Aideen.” The brightly illuminated blue of his eyes was losing its battle against his pupils, his expression filling with an insatiable glow of lust.
“I wish I could kill you right now, Julian.”
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, his hands dropping from my wrists while his smile remained, continuing to excite my soul.
“Julian.” His name burned my tongue. “Tell. Me.”
Julian stood from the bed, reaching for my hands, clinging to his gun as though it were my child. “Come with me.”
“No.”
“You can bring the gun.” He winked at me, opening his palm for me to grab. Bastard. I stepped around his extended arm, keeping my aim focused directly toward Julian’s chest. Imagining a bullet breaking through his muscular build, ending his life, simply destroyed me. It destroyed me. I can’t kill him. He knows this too. He’s a wizard.
I followed his shadow, heading into the kitchen of my suite, where I took my place in a chair at the small table, continuing to point Mr. Friendly at Julian.
“You know who I am, Aideen.” Julian reached for a corked bottle of merlot on the counter, pulling the cork and pouring some into a glass for himself before returning to the table, where I remained with my aim centered on him.
“I know you do. You’ve known from the moment you saw me in your coffee shop when you’d come back from the hospital. No type of treatment or damage to your psyche would completely erase what we shared.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“That mouth.” Julian laughed, shaking his head while he sipped from his glass. “It has always driven me mad. When we’re done pretending you’re about to kill me—”
“Fuck you.”
“Not yet.” He shrugged, his arrogance pouring out with his condescending laughter. “Do you remember how long you were in the hospital?”
“A few weeks.”
Julian’s head shook mid-swallow. “No, babby. Try a few months.” Months? How does he know this? Why don’t I know this?
“Another lie?” I swallowed, my hands wobbly around his gun.
“I’ve never lied to you, Aideen.” His tone grew stern. “I never have, and I won’t ever.”
“Omissions are lies.”
“Lies, never. Omissions, only to protect you,” he protested, placing his empty glass on the table. “Put down the gun, Aideen.” Fine. I placed it on the table but continued to hold my trembling palm over our silver companion.
“You were there for months, my dear,” Julian said after inhaling a deep breath. “I know that because I was there with you.”
“No,” I feverishly shook my head, “absolutely not.” No. Those are just nightmares. Those are projections of life, placing current events into elaborate dreams. Dreams. That’s all. Nightmares. None of them are real.
“You know me.” He reached across the table, tentatively touching my fingers. “You know who I am because I’m certain you feel every ounce of tenderness, every inkling of passion, every fucking particle of air around us that fills with a consuming hum of electricity when we’re in the same room. Not even near each other, but in the same room, sharing the same air, and I know your heart skips multiple beats because mine is doing the same thing. Right now, I want nothing more than to cross this table and devour you.” Am I alive? I blinked, the only function my body would complete as I was paralyzed by Julian’s lexicon, the husky velvet pouring from his lips ceasing my heart.
“Look at how your chest is heaving. You can barely breathe,” he continued, his tone subdued and deadly. “Your heart can’t contain itself.”
“How have you mastered hiding yours?”
“I’ve never hidden my heart from you.” His head shook in defiance. “I’ve only ever shown you what I could of me at any given moment.”
“Right now,” I mocked him, “I want nothing more than the truth. If you don’t give it to me, I’m going to kill one of us and, as you so kindly informed me the first time I was tied up in a similar chair, that would be a bitch to clean.” Julian’s eyebrow lifted in response, his expression subtly humored and entirely seductive. Shit. I can’t stand him when he does that sort of thing.
“I’m going to tell you a story, Aideen,” he began, his eyes focused on wine pouring from his bottle into the glass between us. “It’s about a young man.”
“I don’t need your biography, you bastard.”
He smiled at me, shaking his head at my tone. “I’m not going to warn you again about that mouth, babby.”
I moved the gun, reveling in the loud scratching sound it elicited grinding against the pristine kitchen table. I was filling with angst while I waited for him to continue. He’s right. My chest is heaving. I know him?
“I’ll summarize for you, darling.” His tone softened once he swallowed from his glass. “There’s this young man. He’s about twenty-two, just finishing college. Things were going well for him. He was about to attend Harvard law school, following in the footsteps of his father, his grandfather, and blah, blah, blah. But there was a hoard of secrets, omissions as you called them, that swallowed this young man whole.”
“Let me guess,” I sneered at him, meanwhile dying with each word expressed from his perfect pout, “you learned you weren’t Harvard material?”
“Ha,” Julian snorted, biting his top lip while shaking his head, the sapphires returning to my eyes. “I finished Harvard, Aideen, with honors, and a year early, as a matter of fact. The omissions were with regard to my family.”
“Go on.”
He leaned forward, his lips reddened by the wine. “I think you’re the most beautiful woman who has ever graced this earth. With your head bound by gauze, your eyes stained with tears—even when you hold a gun and threaten me, you are only to be coveted. Please understand and remember that when I tell you this. Please accept that.”
“I thought you didn’t beg.”
“I changed a lot once I met you. You really don’t remember anything?” I shook my head as it clouded with apprehension. I didn’t know what was the real nightmare—the present or my dreams. Julian inhaled deeply as he nodded.
“You’ll need this.” He pushed the bottle of wine toward me, eyeing me as he continued, a boyish smile flirting with his perfect mouth. “You were at your shop one night. It was just you. I guess part of the plan was getting you alone, isolating you so your vulnerability would increase. Fuck, Aideen…just thinking of this makes me sick.”
“Wh…why? This didn’t happen to you.” I couldn’t understand him. Julian’s eyes were wide with an unfamiliar fear. He moved toward me, his chair scratching against the floor, and desperately reached for my hands, clutching them tightly in his warm grasp.
“It did happen to me, Aideen, because from the moment you first smiled at me in the hospital, you became my heart.”
I tried to speak, but my chest heaved too quickly to capture a sound, let alone respond in any way. His heart? I’ve officially lost it.
“I wish you remembered even the smallest piece of it.” His head hung, but he held my hands tightly, squeezing while rubbing his thumbs in circles against my skin. “I would give my life for you to know the love you showed me in the hospital.”
“Love?”
Julian’s head lifted, his eyes frantically searching mine. “Yes. Aideen, you weren’t just attacked at the coffee shop. Malcolm and two other men beat you. They destroyed your consciousness, leaving you to die. You were found by a woman going for a run, and she called the police. Because you had no idea what your name was, you couldn’t tell the police anything. You weren’t even awake for your first four days in the hospital.”
“When did you find me?”
“Day five.” He smiled, his eyes sparkling with a gentle radiance. “I was the first person you saw.” Oh my God. I couldn’t fathom what Julian was telling me. Julian Molloy, the man I wanted to kill, the man who threatened me, bound me, and kidnapped me. The man who held me hostage was there and the first person I saw. I couldn’t believe it. How? How was that even possible? This is too convenient.
“Why don’t I remember you, Julian? How do I know you’re telling the truth?” He was prepared for this question. Julian lifted one hand from mine and inched the wine bottle closer to me, with a pathetic smile along his mouth.
“I hoped you would by now.” His eyes scanned my face while the velvet poured from his lips. “You had terrible migraines there. Debilitating. You weren’t seeing anyone. You weren’t even allowing medical staff in half of the time because your mind literally hurt too much.”
“Tell me about your friend with migraines,” I probed.
“She was beautiful then.” Julian’s voice was muffled against his hand. “She is beautiful now.” Is. My hand tightened around the gun, my knuckles whitening as my hold possessed the silver. Is?
“Is?”
“Aideen?”
I bit my bottom lip, nervously piercing the pink skin that filled my mouth with the flavor of blood. My hand trembled, fighting the weakening grip around the gun. I released a shaking breath that carried my soul with it in a swirling fog across the room.
“Please look at me.” His words were more audible, dangerously clear in my ears, accompanied by the rustling sound of his body moving even closer to mine.
“Please.” I thought he didn’t beg. That wasn’t begging; that was sincere desire, a plea of compromise, a warning that his words exposed the biggest weakness buried deep within Julian.
“Julian…” My voice was a whisper while I stared at my hands. “Please let me go.”
“I need to tell you about her,” he pressed, his fingers wrapping around my forearms, stabilizing me within his hold.
“Your friend?” My mind wandered to his comment weeks prior, about his friend with the migraines. The reason he worried so much about my headaches wasn’t because I reminded him of a friend; it was because I was that friend.
“My girlfriend.”
“That’s not me, Julian.”
“It can be.”
I pulled my arms from his hold and lifted my feet to the edge of the chair, blocking myself from his beautiful hands. He noticed my discomfort and was quick to continue, most likely not wishing to lose me after this conversation. He wouldn’t lose me.
“You were having terrible nightmares, Aideen, and the headaches…it was all because you couldn’t forget that Malcolm had beaten you raw.” His nostrils flared, his posture stiffened, making me shiver in response. “They gave you electroshock therapy. They literally zapped Malcolm from your memory. Zap! Just like that. So the fucking piece of shit could come harass you and stalk you all over again.”
“But I knew he was following me, Julian. I had a restraining order.”
“After the hospital. When he was certain you didn’t remember he had done all of that damage. He visited you twice while you were in there. I knew about the second time because that’s when I spent the night in your room, even though I had been shot.” Shot? Spent the night with me? My heart. My mind. My soul. Julian. I cannot comprehend a thought. Am I breathing? Shit, it’s getting hot in here.
“Elliott told you what Malcolm did, but a pathetic version of it. Shit,” he growled, his fist slamming against the table. “I want them dead. All of them.”
I flinched with his intensity, covering my mouth with the collar of my shirt. He heard my stifled sob from beneath the fabric, and his expression quickly faded while his palms cupped my face, lifting my eyes toward his.
“I wish you could remember just how infatuated we were. I would give anything for you to remember so you truly knew why I have been searching for you, looking for a way to get your mind back to me, to bring you home.” His eyes refused to abandon mine as he continued, “You got a shit version of theirs. Malcolm was obsessed with you romantically and assaulted you one night. You hit your head. End of their story. But really, Aideen, he almost killed you.”
“So have you.”
“Never,” he snapped, his hands falling from my face. Julian’s jaw gaped; he was helpless. I observed his weakened resolve, unsure of how to respond.
“Inside,” I swallowed the nervous lump in my chest, “you’ve almost killed me a thousand times inside, Julian. Wanting. Omissions. All of this.”
“Everything I have done was to wake in you anything to bring you back to me, Aideen. You told me to. In the hospital, you told me not to let them take me away from you.” He hissed in frustration. “I’m begging you to believe me.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” My cheeks burned with tears that streamed down like lethargic waterfalls as Julian pulled away, beginning to unbutton his shirt. Oh, what the hell is this? If he gets naked and assumes I’m…oh Lord. Nope. Put your clothes back on, Julian. With his shirt off, reminding me of his muscular canvas, Julian turned with his back toward me.
“Aideen,” he said over his shoulder, “look for yourself.” Look? At what? I saw his back once, on the night of the explosion when I learned my research was worth it, it was true. His shoulder blade was decorated with an outline of a clover next to a looping, cursive “A” and small Gaelic script, all in white ink.
“Your tattoos? That’s only proof that you have a lot of money to spend, Julian. It proves nothing to me.”
“Next to the clover,” he prompted, “what letter is that?”
“A…”
His head hung, the muscles in his shoulders tightly moving while he whispered, “And whose name begins with the letter A?” Mine.
My heart stopped. It stopped. I died. I was no more. I covered my mouth with a gasp as a flood of tears rushed from my eyes. I could barely breathe.
“And the…the Gaelic?”
Julian turned around in his chair, pulling on his shirt while his suspenders dangled at his hips. He didn’t bother to button the shirt, which would have driven my insides insane if it weren’t for the current circumstances.
“It says,” Julian looked at me, seeing me, “mo ghra amhain. My…” His palms reached for me, holding me in his grasp as though he already anticipated I would leave.
“My…” Julian swallowed, his thumbs wiping away my tears. “My only love.”